


Robinhood

by JeffersonStarships



Category: Deadpool - All Media Types, Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: (Not by Wade but it's graphic), A/B/O, Alpha!Vanessa, Alpha!Wade, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Future, Angst, Attempted Sexual Assault, Fluff and Angst, Future Fic, Pack Dynamics, Past Rape/Non-con, Polyamory Packs, Post-Apocalypse, Shameless Smut, Smut, Wade has several mates, at least in the beginging, but without the dragons and politics?, game of thrones inspired, i tried for angst with happy ending, looong winters, omega!Peter, top!wade
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-05-12 18:18:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 44,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19234540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JeffersonStarships/pseuds/JeffersonStarships
Summary: (Look for trigger warnings in tags.)Peter didn’t think he was bad person, sure he did some stuff that put him in the gray area of antihero-ism, but when dystopia happens to a perfectly fine planet, and you either got to build a castle with the remainder of society or die out in the cold. Well then, you don’t exactly got the perfect recipe for heroes. Put a few generations between then and now and add in a dash of being born an omega to a family with some clout, and that’s how shit hits the fan.The title of Robinhood has been thrown around a time or two, but Peter’s just fine not being mentioned at all.





	Robinhood

**Author's Note:**

> This came out pretty much all at once and rather fully formed. It almost had a live of its own.
> 
> Also, I ain't got no beta so I apologize for any mistakes.
> 
> Also-Also, this not the 100,000 word spideypool monstrosity i have been working on but, i have given up hope it will be done in the foreseeable future. It will happen when it happens, IDEK.
> 
> Hope you enjoy this one though. :)
> 
>  
> 
> SERIOUS TW!! Read tags. It gets graphic!
> 
> Edit: added some tags and tried to correct minor mistakes in the fic. I tried my best but i always miss stuff, so i apologize.

            Peter woke up in a under furnished antechamber where there should have been a seating area or something, there was just an accent table with a single lit candle lantern, but no other decoration. Even the thick, gray stone walls were stripped bare.

            Peter had been very unceremoniously been dumped on the smooth, stone floor that at the very least was warm due to the hot spring water that ran through the walls and kept most rooms warm in a deep snow season like this. Peter’s shoes and all of his weapons as well as most of his layers had been taken from him, leaving him in just a paper-thin tunic and tight running pants that made him light as air in case he needed the agile speed that sometimes even horses couldn’t muster.

            Even the knife he kept in a special chest holster under all his clothes was gone. An almost unknown occurrence since most people had the ‘moral decency’ not to undress an omega or molest them to the degree they could find the delicate rigging or thin blade.

            There were only two exits to the room and judging but the feral alpha smell punching through the warped, wooden door to the main room, that was not where Peter wanted to go.

            He scrambled to his feet, his knees weak and wobbly as he slammed his fists to the metal door leading to the hall. The kind of thing meant to keep someone in, not protect from invaders. It was a prison cell.

            “Hey! Hey! Let me out of here!” Peter yelled, a cold, terrified sweat starting up once he put his back toward the smell of the furious alpha in the next room. He pounded harder on the door, “LET ME THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!!”

            The little sliding hatch at the top of the door opened, spilling in a stark, warm fire-lit glow. Someone stepped between the hatch at the light source, the thick glasses of the dickhead beta who’d knocked him out showing himself. “Now now,” the grubby, greasy _bastard_ cooed, “Enough of all that yelling, little omega.” He smiled at Peter, and if there wasn’t a semi-decorative metal gate over the hatch, Peter would have reached through the door to ring the greasy fucks neck. _Little omega_.

            “Fuck. You.” Peter spat seething rage, “You let me out of here you disgusting-“

            “HA!” the beta spat back, “You broke in our home. Stole from us. It’s your own fault your stuck in there really.”

            Peter bit back the tirade of hostility on the tip of his tongue, but he could smell himself sweating something sweeter, something that explained the weakness of his knees, and the tingling rush at his cheeks.

            The alpha in the next room was in rut, a feral rut at that, the kind of sexual imperative that had all the possibility of an alpha killing his partner for any number of perceived slights. Alphas were mindless in a feral rut, basically animals, living on instinct alone. Sometimes even an omega’s unconscious fear smell is enough to get them killed.

            And as bad as that was, Peter could feel his body syncing up to the alpha’s rut, his body creating a sympathetic heat to help the alpha he didn’t even know through this painful, biyearly event, an unfortunate reaction that can only happen if Peter’s and the alpha’s scent chemistry are compatible. Peter’s body was reacting to the alpha’s fire and honey scent with arousal and the alpha could smell it, was releasing more scent as a result, creating a vicious loop.

            Desperation seeped into Peter’s voice as he pressed his head to the metal door, “Please. _For the love of god_ \- I can’t- Get me out of here before he- Please-”

            “Listen kid,” the beta drawled with a hint of concern for his alpha friend, though none of it extended to Peter, “He’s tearing himself apart in there. Won’t even let his alpha/beta pack in for comfort. And we both know you are more than capable of subduing him. Just drop some of that ‘Down Juice’ you used on my guards, and our boy is knocked out for the thick of it. He’s basically comatose for two or three days, and we let you go. And because we’re good guys, we’ll even let you keep the loot as payment.”

            Peter felt his hands start shaking, “I can’t make that pheromone all the time.” Peter hissed with tears in his eyes. Sure, he’d used it on a handful of guards when he broke into the castle, but he had been calm and not on the brink of a sympathetic heat. He needed to have a clear head to control his body like that, he already felt dizzy and light headed.

            Plus, knocking out the alpha with scent would only make his next rut all the more dangerous. He’d be meaner, more desperate. Angry.

            “Well,” the beta said drily, “We aren’t letting you out unless you help that poor bastard, and he’s not in a very forgiving mood to strangers. So, get to it and walk away with heavy pockets, or fucking die. Your choice.” He slammed the hatch closed.

            “NO! No! Please don’t- get back here you motherf-” Peter’s legs gave out and his knees cried as he landed on them. “Fuck!”

            He rolled to his side and cradled his knees to his chest as his mind spun around him.

            The alpha’s scent was stronger than ever now. The air thick with him as it crawled down Peter’s throat, and he almost choked on the smoke and fire of it, almost licked his lips at the cooked sweet afterburn. There was a lethargy to his movements now, to the roll of his joints, to the push of his breath. The only saving grace was the tendril of thought a sympathetic heat allowed.

            If it were a real heat, Peter would be a keening, whining, demanding disaster who only had sporadic moments of clarity over the week of heat dazed confusion. His pack would have to practically drown him in ice baths and extremely watered down spiced wine, because he was too sweaty during a heat to do much but complain and the only thing he’d eat or drink was spiced wine because his mama raised a wino through and through, even if he only ever drank when he was in heat.

            A sullen sound curled through the wooden door, the alpha on the other side was pressed against it, based on the pattern of shadow under its frame. The cry was half pain, half need, soft despite its urgency.

            Peter’s scent went soothing, adding a becoming call to his arousal, only undercut by a long stream of fear that Peter couldn’t control. The abysmal near sob that followed had Peter crawling toward the door despite his fear.

            Peter didn’t think he was bad person, sure he did some stuff that put him in the gray area of antihero-ism, even after what he did to Norman Osborn. But when dystopia happens to a perfectly fine planet, and you either got to build a castle with the remainder of society or die out in the cold. Well then you don’t exactly got the perfect recipe for heroes. Put a few generations between then and now and add in a dash of being born an omega to a family with some clout, and that’s how shit hits the fan.

            The title of Robinhood has been thrown around a time or two, but Peter’s just fine not being mentioned at all.

            In the game of thieving, Peter’s small time. Never takes much at a time. Only takes from those that won’t really miss it to feed his own pack, or from those who’d see it as just fair game. That’s what this whole thing was about anyway. Peter had only broken in because there really is no honor in this particular pack of thieves, and even if that greasy beta had promised to let Peter go, he doubted it was true even if he survived.

            But that pathetic cry of pain from the other side of the door was almost too much for Peter’s heart to bear. His palms were clammy with the need to touch the alpha, with the need to press his scent into the alpha. To scent mark with his wrists and press the alpha’s nose to the Peter’s scent glands in his neck, to just swallow the alpha in comfort.

            This time it’s Peter who whimpers, his knees fighting him as he crawls to his feet.

Leaning his weight on the frame, he tests the handle.

            The shadow under the door squeaks and scurries away as the handle gives under his hand, and the hunk of wood swings open.

            Peter is slammed with a full pallet of the alpha’s scent. If he’d been choking on it before, he could count himself drown now. He was head over heels washed in it, felt his skin light up with its touch.

            For one terrifying moment Peter’s vision went dark like he was going to pass out. This alpha was dangerous. Had swung between absolute despair and seething, fighting rage. Peter could taste it in air. But then there was the scent of blood, the alpha’s blood. Like the man had cut himself open and soaked into every crevice of the room.

            A vicious growl sobered him back to reality.

            At one time, the room had been nicely furnished, a table and chairs, maybe a desk or a dresser, but there wasn’t much but the fairly untouched bed and splinters left to show for it.

Only one of the two windows were still covered by a heavy drapery to keep winter out, but the drapes on the one closest to the door had been ripped from their holdings, casting the room in a bright, white light as snow danced down from the sky outside. The fireplace and all the candles were unlit, and the room suffered from cold because of it.

            The curtains around the bed on the far wall were drawn so Peter couldn’t see inside, but the source of the furious growling wasn’t hidden there. No, the man was standing in the far corner, hunched and menacing with his impressive canine teeth bared at Peter.

            Peter’s eyes were quick to land on the man’s snarl first, but after that, they wandered without knowing where to stop. Long legs, broad shoulders, big hands curled into fists, feral alpha red eyes, sans eyebrows, facial hair or a mane of any kind, and large swaths of uncovered, heavily scared skin.

            Painful, pink and silver, irritated, tender looking scars that had Peter biting back a whimper of sympathy. They didn’t look like burns scars, Peter had seen plenty of those. However, Peter was willing to bargain that the scars covered damn near every inch of the man. The alpha’s bloody, loose pants the only thing covering him.

            The alpha had yet to say a word, even if his snarl was basically one big ‘Fuck Off!’ Feral alphas usually have one hell of a time gathering enough mental capacity to talk.

            His growling picked up in intensity at Peter’s wondering eyes, so Peter settled his eyes on the alpha’s. The little tendril of thought available to Peter let him know that he’d passed the point of no return the moment he did. Because all at once Peter’s body decided to stop being afraid.

            The alpha was terrified of Peter. And even if the average alpha could break Peter over their knee, this one looked not just scared of Peter but dazed by the omega’s welcoming scent, wavering between want and need and tentativeness with each blink. And if Peter had any damn sense, he’d be running for his life right now. He’d be breaking open that window and running for it in the middle of a blizzard, barefoot and barely clothed because this was not a well-balanced man in front of him. He was broken and hurting and in a feral rut and not letting his pack sooth him. That beta had sent him in here to knock out the alpha because he was hurting himself, could and probably would hurt anyone who came near him.

            But Peter’s body had synced up to the man, he could feel the first traces of slick dripping down the back of his thigh, felt his pulse racing to meet the beat of his alpha’s, smelled the begging plea in his own scent, and then that little blip of thought posed a very interesting question, ‘What if you just gave in?’

            There was a lot of things Peter couldn’t do. He couldn’t run. Couldn’t knock the alpha out with his scent. Couldn’t think of a reason to not give in.

            Either he gave in and helped the alpha through his rut, or he’d die, whether from the alpha himself or his angry pack when he didn’t do anything.

            So, he stepped into the room, his body swaying almost pitifully, letting the door close behind him. Keeping his lidded eyes on his alpha, Peter let his head tip back, scenting hard and sweet into the room, his mouth moving without thought, “Alpha, why are you way over there?” his alpha’s growl sharpened, “I need you.”

            Peter can almost hear something snap in the man across the room. To say that the man crossed the room in a blink of the eye, means less when Peter’s blinks last for a handful of seconds at a time. But Peter goes from feeling like he might collapse to being swallowed whole before he could even think to fight it.

            His alpha has him backed hard against the door, Peter’s hips pinned down as his alpha’s fingers dig too painfully in the thighs Peter has wrapped around his waist, but his alpha is breathing open mouthed and loud with animalistic enjoyment against Peter’s neck glands, and Peter is wheeling with the strength and speed of his alpha, _his alpha._

            Peter slides his hands up his alpha’s back, digging his fingers into the scent glands on either side of the alpha’s neck, making the man’s hips snap hard against Peter’s, making his alpha pant heavily with desperation. Pressing his luck again, Peter digs his fingers in harder.

            The pain it brings his alpha is a mix of pure agony and relief, Peter knows. The pressure along with omega scent mimics a bonding bite, flooding his alpha with all the feel-good chemical his body hasn’t been getting from his previous ruts. If he’d been taken care of properly, rubbed and touched and coddled over by his pack during his ruts then he wouldn’t have gone feral this time.

            Going feral is most common among the military. They push their bodies to endure without contact during ruts because it brings out desirable traits. Increased aggression, strength, sense of smell, sight. Even if it makes them increasingly more dangerous for each next rut.

            If this alpha wanted to keep hold of that aggression, he could turn it on Peter now.

            Yet, the alpha was practically purring into Peter’s skin when he lets up the pressure. By some miracle, the alpha didn’t take the pressure as a sign to either place a bonding bite or rip Peter’s throat out. Neither a very nice thing to do, but not beyond reason.

            Any sense of danger Peter and the alpha’s pack had suspected evaporated when the man started nosing at Peter’s jaw, started purring into his skin, started kneading his fingers into Peter’s thighs. All growl and no bite, Peter could feel as well as smell the soft, pretty thing this man was.

            Nosing back, Peter lowered his chin, closing his eyes to kiss his alpha’s mouth, to tuck his tongue against his. Soft and sweet, his alpha reciprocated. A purr deep in Peter’s chest started up, “Alpha, bed.” He ordered, between kisses.

            The alpha held tight to Peter’s thigh with one hand cupped the back of his head with the other and continued to press soft kisses to Peter’s mouth and jaw as he stepped back from the door, holding Peter’s weight, though the omega wrapped his arms around his shoulders for balance. “Strong alpha, so strong.” Peter praised with a purr. His alpha carried him over to the bed pushing back the curtains with his shoulder to set Peter down on the undisturbed sheets.

            That had Peter’s attention. While most of the other furniture had been smashed to bits and shoved haphazardly in a corner, the bed and its curtains had been untouched, which was strange. But then even the inside of the bed was not lain in. Nesting was instinctual, but his alpha either couldn’t or was too afraid to, even if he left the bed in peace.

            He turned up to the alpha as he crawled over Peter, knocking his legs to either side to sit between Peter’s legs. The alpha sat back on his hunches to rub his palms over Peter’s front, to scent every visible inch of his omega. The bright red of his eyes darkened with interest and the beginnings of scent sedation that could take at the very least another day to coax away the red from the alpha’s eyes, but if Peter had been thrown in here quite early in the rut, he could be stuck in this room for nearly a week until the alpha’s use of him ends.

            Peter let the alpha’s gentle hands roam where ever they pleased, spreading out his own hands to scent the bed himself. Creating the begins of a temporary nest for him and his bed mate. Only inwardly flinching when cold fingers grazed the bare skin of Peter’s stomach, but otherwise he leaned back and enjoyed the gentle touching, letting the alpha go as slow or fast as we wanted despite Peter’s arousal stirring with each pass of his alpha’s hand over skin.

            In some weird backward way, because Peter knew he didn’t have a choice but be locked in this room, he found great comfort in not doing what he was supposed to, seducing an alpha he was supposed to knock out. But then again, Peter had always found pleasure in doing things he shouldn’t. Like running away from home to avoid being married off to a pack he loathed. Like becoming a now and again thief. And this was just as dangerous as any of that.

            He stayed calm and compliant as his alpha stripped him of his shirt and pants, leaving Peter cold to the air as his alpha kicked out of his own pants. But he went back to banishing Peter’s goose bumps with his warming hands as soon as he could.

            For a split second Peter considered renaming his alpha to Soft and Sweet, because honestly, where the hell is that growling, snarling thing Peter had walked in on?

            Deep red eyes met Peter’s face as he grabbed one of his alpha’s wrist to nuzzle into the glands and lick playfully at his pulse. His alpha’s eyes darkened further, his other hand trailing down between Peter’s legs and slipping into the wet with a flick of his fingers just as playful as Peter’s tongue had been.

            A breathless laugh tumbles from his mouth and affection surges high in Peter’s chest, leaving a tingling spread of fuzziness to dissipate over Peter’s whole body. He reaches up for his alpha kissing his enjoyment into his mouth, nipping at his lips with his canines and sucking on his alpha’s larger canines when he nips back. His alpha retaliates by stroking his fingers back into Peter, finding his sensitive places and making Peter gasp and shutter breaths against his alpha as he works over them, pulling away and diving back in until he has Peter rapt, moaning, and dizzy with sensation without coming just edging closer and closer to absolute madness.

            Which, Peter realizes, his alpha wants. His alpha is working on instinct, and that means the alpha- his alpha- is used to being pulled away from. Thinks he has to work Peter up until he won’t pull away. He thinks Peter, despite egging him on, would pull away. It’s heartbreaking.

            Peter gets his foot planted firmly on the bed and uses his alpha’s moment of surprise at his sudden movement to roll them on the bed, placing Peter’s ass against the thick erection of his alpha, who flinches into a noiseless snarl in fear, his fingers digging into Peter’s hips painfully. “My alpha,” Peter soothes between kisses, wrapping his arms under his alpha’s head to cradle it, one hand removing itself from his hip to curl over Peter’s shoulder to hold him tight to his chest, trapping Peter’s erection between them. “My perfect, sweet alpha. _Mineminemine_.” He declares with feeling, shifting his weight on his legs enough to slide his alpha’s length against his dripping wet hole.

            The alpha pants at the friction, and Peter aches hollow at the lack of presents inside of him. The slide of his alpha’s hard knot against him a promise he wishes he could partake in as soon as possible.

            “Don’t let go alpha, don’t let me go,” he begs, and is greatly repaid in kind as his alpha uses his strength to lift Peter and the omega reaches between them to align them and his alpha snaps his hips up into Peter, the fully swollen knot too big to push into him too. Instead, it catches on his rim and punches out the air from Peter’s lungs, and all sense from his mind.

            He knocks his alpha’s hands away from their perches to sit back with more pressure on the hard knot and responds blindly to the flash of teeth and brutal strength that clamps down on his waist with an obstinate snarl of his own. He even lashes out with his hands to clamp down on his alpha’s neck glands with his blunt nails. The furious snarl and growl cut off with the attack Peter fights into his alpha mouth. Peter’s hips rising and falling onto his alpha’s length the whole time, searching frantically for connection. Wanting his alpha in him. Needing to be seated fully on him. The knot pressing in deeper and deeper with each rough pass.

            It’s only when his alpha flips them again, pulling out and caging the omega in his limbs and screams into Peter’s neck that he realizes how stupid he’d been to get carried away.

            He snaps his hands away from his alpha’s glands, his heart pounding and brain ticking away from him too fast for him to catch up. Once free from Peter’s punishing grip, the alpha rises with absolute menace on his face, the kind of anger that has ended far better an omega than Peter. The kind of anger that could melt stone. The alpha’s eyes a shining, bright red.

            Peter doesn’t break down into tears or whimper and cry hysterically for forgiveness, though he wants to.

            Whether he wants to admit it or not, Peter was raised to be better than that. Raised to be married to royalty. Learned all about alphas and omegas. Learned how to never kneel unless he was at his alpha’s feet.

            It had only been when he’d ran away that he learned the importance of affection, of genuine affection. Fealty only went as far as the alpha cared about the future. Feral alphas only needed you right then, they couldn’t care about tomorrow as long as you were there today. But angering them as severely as Peter had angered this man would have been a death sentence to anyone- _anyone._ Right now didn’t matter if they thought you would hurt them, no matter how small or big the slight.

            Swallowing hard, Peter let his head drop back to the bed. If he died today, if he had to die on his back, he’d do it with eyes open. His alpha had the better leverage, was stronger than Peter and had both of Peter’s hands pinned over his head with only one of his own. And Peter had been stupid and reckless where he should have been thoughtful of the dangerous situation he’d placed himself in.

            For several terrible moments, all his alpha did was snarl and stare down Peter like he was ready to rip Peter to shreds if he so much as blinked too hard.

            So, he waited patiently, trying his best not to shift or move, even as his hips complained at the strain of being held open by the alpha between his legs but not supported in the slightest. When his thighs started to shake with exertion, his alpha’s eyes tore away from his to glance down at them.

            Surprisingly, he released Peter’s wrists to move a palm to each thigh where he curled his fingers into the trembling muscles, kneading and messaged them into something less tense. Once again it was a show of softness where aggression should had been present. Guilt sept heavily into Peter’s scent. When his alpha smelled it, he rose forgiving eyes on Peter, only making him feel more guilty.

            He tentatively lowered his hands from over his head to reach down his body to where his alpha’s hands where pressed into his thighs. He kept his touches light and sweet as an apology. He swept his fingers up his alpha’s wrists to as far up his forearms as Peter could reach and back again, repeating the movement with gentle eye contact, until the brightness of the red in his alpha’s faded to something smoldering.

            Carefully, his alpha moved his hands up his thighs to his hips where he kneaded into the joints with just his thumbs in a smooth motion. Seemingly inadvertently allowing Peter’s hands further reach up his arms. But it seems more purposeful when he slide his hands to Peter’s sore waist, where a deeper purple set of bruises than the sets on his hips and thighs twinge when his alpha’s hand traces over them with regret, before fondling up Peter’s flat chest and scooting his knees further under Peter’s back until his hands are cupping Peter’s face and his rut swollen erection is pressed against Peter but not breaching him.

            Peter keeps his hands light against his alpha’s shoulders and keeping the man’s poignant eye contact, fighting against his aversion to patience because he can see the challenge in his alpha’s eyes. Peter isn’t allowed to set the pace after what he did to his alpha.

            But the press of his alpha against his hole has Peter’s heart rate climbing, has sweat breaking over his chest, has slick slipping passed his ring of muscle to slide against the object pressed to it. Peter’s toes curl at the wait, and as much as he wants to press his body down into his alpha, to beg and plead for his alpha, to say whatever it takes for his alpha to take him, his alpha is watching him with hard eyes.

            A single sad whimper cuts through his chest before he can stop it, and he closes his eyes at his own weakness and selfishness. This wasn’t supposed to be about Peter’s pleasure, it was about helping an alpha. It was about his alpha. He turns his nose into one of the hands holding his face, kissing softly at his wrist, not playful or teasing but calm and sweet.

            Taking that as his cue, the alpha presses into Peter in one long, slow motion that sucks the breath from his lungs and drags over Peter’s prostate. His knot pressing hot against his hole, Peter not stretched enough to fit him yet. So, he pulls back with another long slow motion, pushing back in and a heartfelt moan crashes out of Peter at the drag over his sensitive glands and the incredible burn of his alpha’s knot pulling at his hole. His alpha purrs against Peter’s shoulder with a pleased smile that has Peter momentarily stunned.

            His alpha is so pretty.

            Has a smile meant for stealing hearts, is stealing Peter’s.

            “My alpha,” Peter whispers in astonishment to himself. A litany of _mineminemine_ , circles and circles in Peter’s fuzzy little brain, interrupted only by the stutter and stop of Peter’s breathing to the press and awe of his alpha’s slow torture.

            It feels like hours have dragged Peter away from any sense of reality when his alpha’s slow rhythm has finally stretched him enough for the thick, swollen knot to press passed his rim. Peter’s whole body instinctively clenches down on the alpha’s knot and he comes with stars and sparks in his clamped eyes, but the pleasure only rolls him over again when his alpha follows him over the edge coming hot and thick inside of him. But his alpha is in a rut so coming just the once isn’t going to be enough for him.

            With his knot still swollen and inside of Peter, he slides out at the two or three inches he can before his knot catches on Peter’s tight rim and thrusts back into his omega, Peter’s hypersensitive body flinching at the same time it gasps with too much pleasure.

            His alpha kisses him so sweet, and kneads into the meat of Peter’s thighs one at a time to distract Peter from the pain, to keep Peter focused on the too intense pleasure that has him pushing right up along the line of coming so hard he could pass out, if only his body were ready for it like it would be in a real heat. He just can’t muster it in a sympathetic heat like this.

            His alpha comes with increasingly powerful orgasms a handful more times however before Peter’s body has had enough time to recover. Then, Peter’s chasing his alpha to the finish line. Kissing his alpha’s neck and licking into this mouth, dragging his hands up and down his alpha’s back, kneading into the strong muscles of his alpha’s ass.

            He’s almost deaf to the moans and cries he’s being keening out for his alpha, but he can’t ignore the grunts and pants of his alpha. He smiles like an idiot when his alpha mumbles nonsense almost recognizable as praise and encouragement. Presses loving kisses under his alpha’s chin every time he comes inside him.

            He comes like he’s been set on fire, and his alpha comes with as much intensity, shaking and loudly gasping for breaths that don’t come easy.

            The alpha’s lust has finally been sated enough that his thrusting slows and stops, even if his knot will still hold for a while before it deflates enough that he can pull out.

            They _could_ try to pull out, but Peter’s body reacts instinctively to tighten before his alpha can pull out, making it almost impossible if they don’t want to hurt themselves.

            The alpha stops himself from collapsing on top on him to instead cradle Peter against his chest as Peter sobs with too much emotion. His body feeling too weak to move and his mind too foggy to think clearly enough for him not to panic.

            With great care to not jostle Peter too much, the alpha holds Peter to him as he sits up and scoots them over to the pillows where he lays back and settles with Peter on top. The knot pulling against Peter’s rim, making him cry silently until the alpha settles him a little lower and turns Peter’s face so he can wipe away his tears.

            The omega watches his alpha’s caring face. Silently admiring the deep purple of his eyes as the red mixes with what must be dark blue irises and the kiss bitten quality of his alpha’s mouth until he can’t keep his eyes open anymore.

            He doses lightly until his alpha pulls a blanket around them and he gratefully falls asleep, content and comfortable with the sated quality in his alpha’s scent. The happiness and affection in it.

            He wakes for just a moment to whine incoherently when his alpha pulls away, Peter’s dried come between them pulling at their skin. He grabs his alpha’s wrist in an attempt to keep him when he tries to escape, but his alpha kisses him complaint and sneaks away. He comes back with a warm, wet cloth to wipe Peter clean, the both of them purring at the process even if Peter is just too tired to open his eyes or help in any significant way. Only squirming when the alpha cleans the mess that has dribbled out after the knot deflated enough to be pulled free, everything between his legs oversensitive, but when his alpha is done, he wraps Peter in his blankets and curls around him protectively.

            Peter purrs into his alpha’s chest as they both drift back to sleep.

 

 

 

 

            Hours later, Peter is woken by the heavy slide and clink of a heavy metal door opening. In his tired fog, he doesn’t understand the implication of it.

            The loud knock at the wooden door as it opens, however, has Peter’s eyes flying open.

            “Hey, don’t kill me, Wade. It’s Weasel,” the intruding beta says walking into the room, Peter recognizes the voice as the bastard who locked Peter in the antechamber.

            Also, Peter has spent enough time in the scent of the alpha beside him to recognize the scent bond between him and the beta. However, the alpha himself doesn’t seem to care about that as he springs up to cover Peter with his body, snarling something horrifying to his packmate.

            “So, where’s- _Jesus Christ!_ ” the beta flees as the alpha floods the room with the kind of aggressive, protective scent that has Peter dizzy and would challenge an alpha to fight to the death if they got any closer to his omega.

            The wooden door slams shut. But the beta- fittingly named Weasel, apparently- doesn’t run father than that. He catches his breath and gives Peter’s alpha -Wade- time to fret over Peter within the dark of their nest.

            A few minutes later, Weasel calls through the door, “What the hell was that? You aren’t keeping that little omega in there as some sort of sick toy are you?- _Ohmygod_. Tell me you’re not into dead fucking!”

            Snarling, the alpha lurched as if to launch himself at the door and attack his packmate, but the barely there touch of Peter’s hand to his wrist makes his stop in his tracks, turning to check on him.

            “Wade!” Weasel screeched with horror and concern at the alpha’s seemingly lack of answer, making the alpha’s scent go sour with a confused mix of anger and anxiety.

            “For the love of god. Shut. Up!” Peter snapped toward the door, the other side of it going hauntingly quiet.

            Peter rose to his knees to drape himself over his alpha’s back and wrap his arms around his shoulders. He nuzzled into his alpha’s scent glands and tried to keep his scent as soothing as he could. His alpha wove his fingers with one of Peter’s hands and turned his head to nuzzle back at Peter, who kissed him as praise for distracting and calming himself.

            Having given himself time to process and for the alpha to settle, Weasel was much calmer when he spoke through the door. “He’s okay… right? You’re helping him, right? He’s not hurting himself or anything?” he sounded a little desperate.

            Peter’s heart broke to think of his alpha hurting himself, but feral alphas weren’t always the most straight-thinking things.

            His mind spins to the stench of blood all around the room, the stench soaked heavy into the room and never leaving even if Peter’s mind had been quick to filter it out, if for nothing else than to keep Peter from being sick.

            He whimpers slightly into his alpha’s shoulder. He doesn’t want to think of how the alpha had hurt himself enough to make the room smell like he gutted himself. Especially when Peter hadn’t found a single cut or open wound among his alpha’s scars, but then he hadn’t really been looking.

            “I’m helping,” Peter squeaked pathetically, not believing he was even if his alpha was in fact getting better. His alpha’s scent was just as smoky sweet, but it wasn’t laced with furious desperation. His eyes had even softened to a deep blue overnight, and even if he hadn’t spoken yet, Peter could see him following the conversation in a way he couldn’t’ve if he wasn’t getting better.

            “Right?” he asked his alpha, who smiled like Peter was the cutest thing he’d ever seen before knocking Peter to his back and jumping on him to press a barrage of kisses over his face, startling Peter into giggles.

            “ _Ohmygod, Shiklah is going to be pissed_ ,” he hears Weasel mutter before the metal door slams shut and locks with a solid clank.

            His alpha seems indifferent to it as he showers Peter. Which is all fine. One crisis at a time please? For better or worse, Peter has roped himself to this alpha for his rut. And even if Peter isn’t in a proper heat with his alpha, instinct still has role in his staying. Scent bonding during sexual activity is not uncommon.

            Not to mention, Peter can feel another sympathetic heat crawling up the back of his legs, heat and arousal growing with the rising of his alpha’s scent. A loop of arousal scent and complete nakedness changing the context of his alpha’s sweet kisses to something more lingering, something more possessive.

            Peter and his alpha roll around in their warm nest playfully, trading lingering kisses for little nips of teeth and back again. Peter taking care to be soft and kind for his alpha, even if the alpha’s sense of restraint tests his patience to no end.

            There’s still a sense of wonder at the beauty of his alpha. His wicked grin and charming smile dangerous weapons. And the honest convention of emotion in his blue eyes is refreshing. String Peter along nicely so by the time his alpha has them on their sides and is sliding deep up to his knot, Peter’s panting just as hard for his alpha as he is for his omega.

            With the alpha to his back, Peter has to turn over his shoulder to meet his alpha’s nuzzling, but his alpha’s hands are everywhere on his front. Holding him close at varying points and pillows his head with a strong arm that Peter nips at when his alpha pulls away from kissing to lick and suck at Peter’s scent glands.

            Slow and steady were rare things for Peter but his alpha kept a good rhythm, set a torture that felt like hours in the making. And even when he finally slipped his knot into Peter and he clenched instinctively he wrapped his hand around Peter’s length to keep him from coming right then. The omega sobbing with urgency but rolling higher and higher with his alpha as the pleasure built with each of his alpha’s orgasms.

            All Peter could think was a circular litany of _Mineminemine_.

            He was nearly screaming with sensation, with pure pleasure and the denial of it when his alpha finally let him come. And after the long build up, after the all the edging, Peter came apart at the seams when he finished. He couldn’t more tell what he said or did or felt than he could explain to you the antique knowledge of rocket science.

            It was just- just- like someone had taken him from the river soaking wet and wrung him dry. Some kind of blasphemous christening where at the end, it wasn’t god’s voice he heard in his ear but his alpha’s purr and rumble of meaningless praise. It wasn’t heaven and hell he saw but his alpha’s body as it curled around him as he shook and shook struggling to breathe again. It wasn’t a renewed life washed into him, and it was wrong to think it was, no matter how it felt.

            And when he closed his eyes, it wasn’t sleep that took him as much as it was his body being swallowed whole by it.

 

 

 

            Peter wakes up slowly, one iota of him at a time. His alpha’s scent is light and airy with contentment and Peter has to agree. The tips of his toes and ends of his fingers are still warm with pleasure.

            His head is pillowed on his alpha’s chest, and is being absently groomed. Gentle fingers running smoothly through his shoulder length, brown hair, all the knots having already been removed while Peter slept. When Peter moved to crawl tighter against his alpha, he felt that he had been given another wipe down as well, since he wasn’t as sticky and gross with dried fluids as he could have been.

            He purred his gratitude and felt his alpha’s deep rumble more than heard it.

            They stayed like that for a long while, Peter letting his fingers come up to trace patterns in his alpha’s scars somewhere in the middle of it.

            They were intricate. Almost as if the scars had been lain over each one at a time. Some looked too grizzly to describe. But others looked like burns, like knife wounds or gunshots. But they couldn’t be. His alpha was _covered_ in scars like these, head to toe covered. No one could endure such treatment and live.

            There was a horridly raised wound right over his alpha’s heart like someone had pierced him through with a sword, but he could hear the beating of that same organ under his ear. Strong and alive.

            Maybe it was just some unnamed skin condition, like psoriasis, but without all the flakiness. His alpha was smooth. Smoother than even Peter who had his fair share of scars. Maybe he moisturized?

            Peter shifted to between his alpha’s legs to press a kiss to his alpha’s seemingly mortal wound. He smiled coyly when his alpha rose a nonexistent eyebrow at him. He settled himself between his alpha’s spread legs, mindful of his and his alpha’s anatomy and still managing to get comfortable.

            His alpha was both unimpressed and amused, Peter could tell. He shone his canine teeth to his alpha, who shone his more impressive set back, making Peter giggle. “Oh, you just think you’re so tough,” Peter teased, “My big bad alpha with his big bad teeth. Too bad you got such a pretty set of blue eyes that belay the whole thing. Who’s supposed to be scared of you? You couldn’t scare a fly-“

            “What about you?” his alpha croaked, concentrating too hard on running his fingers through Peter’s hair casually to notice Peter flinch in shock. “Aren’t you supposed to be a kind little thing? All you do is flash your teeth and bite me. When you were supposed to run away, you walked into a lion’s den without a chair.”

            “You’re not a lion,” Peter smiled. “And this isn’t the circus.”

            “And you’re not a lion tamer… or a chair.”

            Peter laughed helplessly.

            His alpha tucked a lock of hair behind Peter’s ear and looked over with imploring eyes, “I could have killed you.”

            Peter sighed, “Yes. You could have.” He’d expected death quite a few times through this whole thing. Expected do die with spectacular fanfare, but death had not come for him, not with his alpha there to guard him, body and soul.

            “So, you’re stubborn as well as impatient?” his alpha rolled his eyes, “I should have known.”

            “Yes,” Peter smirked cheekily, perking up on his alpha’s chest with sarcasm, “I have many bad traits. Let’s list them, shall we?”

            “Well, let’s see…” his alpha hummed putting a finger to his pursed lips to think.

            “Hey!” Peter laughed pushing his alpha who rolled them over and pinned Peter down. “Hey again!”

            His alpha grinned wildly making Peter’s heart skip time.

            The loud scrape and clank of the metal door had them both lurching up, the fun air gone from their dark nest.

            Knocking on the wooden door had his alpha growling out a warning, but the person on the other side didn’t barge in this time. “Wade? It’s Vee,” a sweet voiced woman called in, the alpha’s growl cutting short and his scent went sweet again, “Can I come in, sweetie? Promise I just got food and will keep my hands to myself.”

            “ ‘Nessa,” his alpha called sliding closer to the door, but not leaving the nest and keeping a hand tangled in with Peter’s as he parted one side of the curtain at the end of the bed, letting the chilled air in.

            The door opened slowly and a short haired alpha woman with a tray walked in, careful and watchful with each step. But she needn’t be so cautious though, his alpha’s scent was open and receptive. It took her a second however to sift through the wall of scent to find the freshest scent in the mix. But when she did, her face transformed, kind and beautiful in equal measure, with a smile worthy of Peter’s alpha- of- _of her alpha_.

            This man was her alpha. He could smell it strong and true in their tangled scents. Not just scent bonded but blood bonded too. Peter hadn’t seen the bite scar with all the other scars on the man’s body, but it must be there, was hidden under the blanket of them.

            Peter reels. How the hell could he have even let it get this far? How could he have ever let himself call this man his? This was just supposed to be something to maybe die doing. It wasn’t courting or romantic, he was fulfilling a need.

            He was an omega with a sympathetic heat the alpha needed. Not for forever. Just right now.

            He’d went into this knowing that. Did he forget?

            Jesus.

            Peter wasn’t so much as jealous as he was tumbled over by pure emotional heartbreak. Not realizing he was being swooped away by it until he felt silent tears drip off the tip of his nose.

            A tight hold on his chin snapped his eyes up to his- up to the alpha’s, his hand rising to wrap around the alpha’s wrist. Unlike all the times before, Peter was having trouble reading his alpha.

            So, he just clamped his eyes shut and went through the systematic shut down of his whole spiraling mind. One at a time, he took all the not easily replaceable and delicate bits of himself and shoved them deep down into the pit of his stomach, saving them from the storm.

            He opened his eyes a carefully crafted creature.

            His parents would be proud.

            He could almost hear Loki, his omega etiquette teacher, cackle with pleasure. ‘Look like a doll. Bite like dog.’ He had been big on anarchism.

            The alpha was staring down terrified at Peter, and Peter could easily smell why, he’d let his scent go wild around him, not even realizing when the alpha had lain him down and caged himself protectively over him. Peter had even bitten crescent marks into the alpha’s forearm with his nails.

            He mewled and nuzzled into the wounds with apology in his scent, forcing back anything not sweet and pleasant.

            He could smell that the alpha’s bondmate had retreated to the antechamber, her scent not angered, just concerned. She hadn’t been upset her bondmate had shared his rut with Peter, likely do to erratic nature the feral rut had forced on him. Sometimes omegas are useful. They have their place.

            Peter pressed a kiss to the alpha’s chin. “You can let her come back in. I’m okay now.”

            The alpha snarled, “Bullshit.”

            Because the alpha wanted it, Peter went against the proper reaction for an omega and glinted his teeth back.

            The alpha whimpered slightly before burying his head under Peter’s chin, “Don’t do that to me, Babyboy.” He wrapped Peter in his arms, and Peter purred something sweet.

            “I was just overwhelmed, alpha. I’m better now. I promise.”

            The alpha kissed a trail up Peter’s neck and jaw, pressing sweet little bites against Peter’s mouth. They almost tasted like apologies.

            Sitting up, the alpha called his bondmate back into the room, and Peter did his best to smell sweet and pretty, to look meek and unobtrusive. The alpha blinked at him over his shoulder but turned to his bondmate when she got to the edge of the bed. She had just enough time to place the platter into the nest before he was on his knees, covering most of his nudity with a sheet as if he was insecure, and pulling her into a kiss she happily returned.

            “I missed you too, Wade,” she murmured against his kiss.

            Peter finally settled the name into place in his mind.

            “Where you been all my life?” Wade purred.

            She huffed a laugh, “Such a sweet talker.” She peeked over his shoulder, “Hello, little thing. Name’s Vanessa. He been sweet on you, little omega?”

            _Little thing. Little omega._ Hateful words made to make omegas feel small whether she realized it or not. Whether she meant it as patronizing or not. If Peter where standing, he’d be almost as tall as Wade, taller than her.

            But Peter was the intruder. Literally and figuratively. He’d broken into their home and crawled into her alpha’s bed. She had every right to tear him apart. She could call him whatever she wanted.

            Peter kept his mouth shut and nodded softly. Wade had been as kind as he could be, regardless of the visible, and the not so visible, murals of hand shaped bruises all over Peter’s body. Peter never minded bruises.

            She turned back to Wade, “What about you, you okay?”

            Peter lowered his head and tried to give them privacy. Wade wasn’t ready to move out of the nest and Peter was sure there wasn’t enough trust sewn between the three of them to have another alpha joining the nest. But from their conversation, Wade only had a day or so left before his rut was over for good.

            She made a point of addressing Peter that she’d spoken with Weasel and she’d make sure he held up his end of the deal, politely not mentioning the reason the beta had posed it in the first place. There was a chance Wade would turn on Peter if he realized the omega had threatened his home by breaking in, but because their proximity they’d scented bonded and Wade would be tied to Peter instinctively for the remainder of his rut. Right now, Peter was more useful to everyone if he was alive.

            He rose his eyes to meet hers, “Thank you,” he whispered meekly. She was watching him not without kindness, but also with assessment. Grateful and uncertain.

            Peter could relate.

            He knew he’d not hold up to the gold standard she’d set. She was breath taking. He was… pale? Definitely too thin. Covered in dark bruises and had absolutely none of all the biting edge he usually armed himself with. Or the multitude of sharp things Peter could have had on his person at any time.

            After a few moments of speaking with Wade, she left the pair with a smile and something teasing about not having too much fun.

            Wade closed the curtain and they ate the bits of dried meats and cubed cheese silently. It took Peter a long time to realize Wade was watching him, and he turned his eyes on the alpha when he did.

            He could smell another round of rut closing in, and as they lay together after they’d finished eating. Their feet were tangled, as they held hands facing each other. Like everything Wade did it was a sweet moment, but if Peter let himself feel it right now. He didn’t think he could take it and walk away from this.

            He’d gone and let himself catch feelings. Feelings that wouldn’t- couldn’t- be reciprocated.

            Peter had a pack to get back to.

            He couldn’t take this alpha and his pack- his bondmates where he had to go, couldn’t leave his family to stay here. Peter didn’t belong here.

            The first kiss the alpha pressed to Peter’s palm had all the power to shatter him to pieces, and the first lick into Peter’s mouth was sweet as his scent. The alpha was slow as ever, but this time, Peter was in no rush to speed anyway.

            He pressed kisses and took breaths.

            He had his kisses stolen and shared his air.

            And before he remembered where he was, remembered what he was, Peter was wrapped around his fingers again. His alpha was all around him. Tight around his wrists, deep between his legs, slick against his throat, bracing against his hips. A tide washing against every inch of him and rolling back before crashing back against him to knock the air from his lungs. His alpha… his alpha… _his alpha._ Maybe not forever, but right now can last for as long as they let it.

            It can last as long as you could stretch a breath, as long as the Wade’s fingers were tucked between Peter’s. As long Peter’s eyes welled with tears, and he didn’t shed them. As long as Wade kissed them free.

            And maybe it can last longer than it takes to forget his own name. To just touch and hold and love someone he doesn’t know, but then again, that isn’t really love. You can’t love someone you don’t know. It isn’t love. It’s something else. But it’s overwhelming all the same.

            Maybe forever is the taste of that feeling in his alpha’s mouth, the shape of it on his alpha’s tongue when he comes. The feeling of a knot filling you whole.

            Regardless, it always ends when you close your eyes.

 

 

 

 

            Peter wakes alone the next day.

            He not sure if he feels anything at all about it one way or another. Still, it takes him too long to crawl out from the warmth of the bed.

            When he does, all of his things, even the clothes he’d worn into the room, are clean and folded by the door on the table from the antechamber.

            He finds his weapons first. Strapping his chest holster on first before going layer by layer of clothes, adding knives to their place along the way. By the time his boots are tied and his knife slid in against his outer ankle, he’s all dolled up.

            His clothes dark because they were the ones he wears for break ins, but his hat is warm over his ears all the same. He rifles through his small pack, finding the handful of coins and expertly prepared leather he’d lifted had not been removed. In fact, there were more coins in there than he’d ever had chanced taking, because the bag was now significantly heavier than he’d like.

            He swallowed down a sour feeling as he spread out the weight of the coins over his person, in his shoes and in his gloves and in a hidden-pockets under the layers so he didn’t jiggle. He tried not to think of this transaction as some kind of payment for sex, but… wasn’t it? That sounds like what he’d turned it into.

            He pulled his bag over his shoulder, snapping it in place before opening the wooden door to the small antechamber to find the metal door swung open, but there was someone there to escort him out, Vanessa.

            It took Peter a moment to shift his bag’s straps slightly, find his center of gravity and lift his chin to her. He felt his nose flare slightly as his brain fought against him at her ingrained scent of Wade.

            She was sitting at a bench and making notes against her knee, but she looked up and folded the papers away when Peter stepped into the hall.

            “Good morning,” she greeted, standing to meet him. Peter noted a distinct change in the air around them now that Wade was not there to step between them. But Peter could tell it was not Vanessa whose demeanor who’d shifted. “Sorry about Wade running off without so much as a word,” she said with genuine apology in her voice, “He’s never been good at goodbyes.”

            “Wasn’t every good at saying hello either,” Peter said drily, and he saw amusement spark in her eyes like he’d flipped a switch she’d been waiting for him to throw.

            She smirked, “No, he’s not.” She gestured down the hall, and for better or worse they started down it together. “I’ll take you out the back entrance, I imagine you don’t want so many eyes on you.”

            Peter hummed agreement, his eyes scanning all around them as they walked, noting every nook and cranny for traps.

            “We can stop by the kitchen if you’re hungry.”

            Peter smirked, tugging his one of his sleeves down a little more firmly, “I think I’ve far outstayed my welcome, don’t you?”

            She shook her head with a smile, “I think you forget where you are. Our house was isn’t known for doing what is expected.”

            “I heard the word ‘mercenaries’ thrown around a bit,” Peter admitted, confused slightly when she laughed.

            “I guess we do do that from time to time, but I prefer the title chaotic neutrals.”

            “Oh well, then,” Peter huffed, “We just won’t get along will we? I’m a true neutral.”

            She laughed again, “Bullshit.”

            Peter shrugged she was probably right. They started down a set of stairs that Peter recognized as the main ones.

            “I didn’t get it before,” she says out of the blue, stealing all of Peter’s attention for too long a moment.

            “Get what?”

            She smiled, “What he saw in you.” Peter is bogged down with layers that stifle his scent, so it must be his expression that has her hand gently brushing his arm with affection, “I didn’t get a chance to even lay eyes on you the first time I walked into the room, but I’d smelled you.”

            Peter couldn’t help his blush, fidgeted with his layers to distract from it.

            She swiped her fingers against the back of his hand, “You were there for him, and we’re grateful. Me and Shiklah got slowed down by the storm and he wouldn’t let his betas touch him when he was like that. But he let you in. And I smelled his acceptance of you in that room, smelled your acceptance too.”

            There was a pause as she waited for him to confirm it, but what was there to fight? It was true. Wade had had him hooked quite early on.

            She grabbed his arm and stopped them in the middle of the hall, “I don’t think you realize how much that means to me.” Peter let his free hand stray close to the knife on his back. “People take one look at him now a days and they don’t see what I see, what you saw. They see scars and they see teeth and mark him as the devil, but he’s not. He’s…” there was a swell of emotion in her eyes, “He’s a good man. He’s a poodle in wolf’s clothing.”

            Peter swallowed. He wasn’t quite sure what the whole point of this was. She’s his bondmate. Alpha’s are notoriously jealous, she should be tearing him apart, not… being nice?

            As if reading his mind, she smiled self depreciatingly starting back up their walk to the back of the building, “I know I’m not exactly the most stereotypical alpha mate, but our pack is basically the island of lost toys, you know? We all found ourselves here by luck or by chance, and it’s a place to belong.”

            It hits Peter than what she’s asking then. What she’s offering.

            They step out into the winter air and they walk in silence through the courtyard and passed the handful of buildings dotted between the main house and the gate. Only seeing a single other person outside their homes or work buildings, but seeing many guards up on the perimeter walls, all of them glaring down at Peter.

            Peter’ hands go to each wrist, and the throwing knives tucked into his sleeves.

            This time Peter’s unease has Vanessa drawing and arm over his shoulder and glaring back at the guards as they walk. He doesn’t fight the help.

            When they get to a secluded door Vanessa easily waves a hand to have the guard open it.

            A spot of red in his peripheral has Peter spinning on his heel.

            Just over the peak of one of the houses, his vison catches on the head of household for this castle. His mask a bright red with white eyes surrounded by black diamonds. The rest of his iconic red suit is hidden under his black, winter furs draped over his shoulders and a few layers to fight the cold.

            Deadpool.

            Notoriously bad news. Having killed for money and killed for fun. Turned his back on alliances, burned down others. Chaotic. Dangerous. The kind of man who would have seen Peter’s little break in either as funny or death worthy, or both.

            If rumors were true, he’d be the kind of man to laugh at your hanging and send your loved ones any of your spoils wrapped in your corpse.

            Yet, he’d turned a blind eye on Peter, though maybe it was because of what he’d done for Wade.

            Maybe that’s chaotic neutral.

            As if scenting Peter, impossible with the wind pushing both their scents toward the main house, Deadpool’s mask turned toward Peter. The dark-skinned woman next to the dangerous alpha turned over her shoulder to watch him too. The skin around one of her eyes was discolored almost white, in the same shape as the diamonds on Deadpool’s mask. Whether it was from paint, or tattoo, or something else, from this distance, he couldn’t tell.

            Peter jumped when a hand dropped on his shoulder, it was Vanessa and she looked exasperated, “I told you he didn’t like goodbyes. But I guess ogling until you go isn’t technically saying the words.”

            “I don’t-“ Peter eyed the open gate, “What does that have to do with-“ Peter felt himself go still. For half a second his brain kinda just started clicking around wildly, haphazardly looked for a foothold, but once it stuck, he felt so _so_ stupid. “Oh.”

            He turned back to Vanessa, who’d gone starkly pale and slightly incredulous, “You didn’t know he was-?” She bit off the rest of the question.

            Peter pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed all the air from his lungs. Of course, Wade was the same person as the notorious Deadpool.

            But it honestly didn’t change a single god damn thing.

            Wade was still dangerous and chaotic, with the added extra of being a known murder. He was still sweet and funny and weird and strangely the most patient, insecure dope Peter had ever met. In the scope of things, this means nothing.

            Peter still couldn’t stay.

            Wade still can’t follow.

            And all that work he’d done yesterday, all the effort he had put into bubble wrapping his feelings and hiding them like a coward, wasn’t wasted. Because he still got to keep the memories. Still got to take them with him. Still had his life, and his loot, and his family waiting for him to come home.

            It’s just that he might not get to take those feelings out of storage again. Maybe that place deep down is where they sit for the rest of his life. Collecting dust on a shelf.

            “You can still stay,” Vanessa says like a shotgun blast, and something slips off the shelf and shatters.

            “No, I really can’t.”

            Without looking up, Peter walks to the gate, slipping out. And trusts the guards at his back not to fire at him because if he looks back, he’s going to want to watch Wade until he can’t see him anymore. And if he does that then he might as well not even look back. He might as well pretend there’s nothing to look back to.

 

 

 

 

            It’s not that long a run to the inn he stored his horse, though the keeper is livid that Peter had not come back in a timely enough fashion. He threatens to keep the horse until Peter slaps a few more gold coins than the guy deserves into his palm, then the keeper tries to sweet talk him into staying for the night like Peter’s his best customer. Peter flashes his teeth and snarls like a wild dog until the man lifts his nose and shakes his finger, muttering about impolite omegas, but thankfully goes away.

            He grooms then saddles his horse and leaves.

            The trek home is slowed by the high snow, the storm season hitting sooner than it should have, but Peter couldn’t turn around. Home was north, and he had to stop at the markets if they were still open.

            By the time he made it to the winter market, which funny enough usually takes place before winter, there aren’t many venders. But the dried meats and cheese men are always there even if prices are a bit steeper by this time. Somehow, the Stark-tech seller is there in his fancy cart and Peter nearly cries when he finds the part his packmate has been asking for and he can finally afford. He gets it and a few selections of GMO seeds that can grow in the harder climates, such are the times.

            And since he got the part for one of his mates, he stops for weaved fabrics and unspun wool, which is cheaper, that another might like.  

            Peter finds a book dealer, not the one he usually buys from, but he mills through the old textbooks and instructionals. Most of the really useful things have been picked over but he finds a higher division math book and some sappy romance novels that he can almost see his packmates groaning at, even if he’ll catch each of them reading them one at a time later on.

            Unfortunately, the wood sellers were long gone, along with the glass workers who make jars and such.

            He packs everything away and regrets so so much as he starts the final stretch toward home. But he still has a significant amount of coins left over, and even if winter is going to be a little more difficult without the extra wood or jars, they’ll survive, they always do.

            It gets cold at night and Peter either has to house his horse or freeze it to death, so he has to stop until sunrise. He has to pay when he stops at inns or someone’s house, but closer to home he knows places to hide. Caves and abandoned buildings. And by the time he’s riding up the trail through the mountains, the smell of his alpha is long gone, even if the bruises persist in browns and greens, but still alive on his skin.

            He cuts off the main trail to his hidden one, ducking under low hanging branches and sidling alongside fierce thorn bushes, his horse familiar enough with the trek that he didn’t fuss too much at being so closed in on by the low tree branches or thorns. Hardly even huffed as Peter lead him close to the rock face of the mountain just outside the reach of the waterfall to duck behind it into the cave entrance. the cave was left unlit for nearly a hundred feet but then it took a few sharp turns and opened up to a cavern carved away by time.

            The space was quite large, big enough for the house, the hot springs’ large pool and Peter’s sizable garden and a grazing field for the handful of animals. Natural light even came in from overhead, an opening in the cavern that Michelle had utilized with mirrors to redirect sunlight to various patches of plants, and solar panels to collect power.

            Peter took a moment to just breathe in the first real breath of home. Nearly a month of missing home. It was bittersweet.

            He pulled on the reins, navigating the horse to the fenced-in graze field. It was late in the day and the cold gusted in from overhead, another snow storm rolling in. Peter hung the saddle bags on the fence along with all the horse tac as he made quick work of the grooming, promising himself to come back and do better job tomorrow. He hung most of the gear back in the shed and carried the saddle bags up to the house.

            He wasn’t really expecting anyone to come running to met him as he half-ass ‘attempted’ to kick off mud and dirt from his boots, so he was surprised when MJ threw open the front door and nearly tackled him to the floor.

            They stumbled against the railing and Peter managed to catch hold of it before they tumbled down the stairs.

            “MJ!” Peter choked, but she was wrapped tight around him already. Her arms like vice grips around his chest and her face buried in his neck, silent tears already leaking passed his collar. He sighed and dropped his face into her long red hair, holding her close. Sniffing hard, his body already chasing her scent, the scent bond still strong but looking for reassurance.

            Footsteps stop at the door and when he looks up Michelle is leaning against the frame, trying not to look like she was as worried as MJ had been. There’s deep circles under her eyes, and she looks like she hasn’t been eating enough again. She’s even been letting MJ braid her natural curls into something halfway between pretty and as practical as Michelle would prefer. “Howdy,” she said sardonically, stepping out of the way when Gwen came marching in.

            Unlike MJ she didn’t jump him, she put and hands on each cheek and kisses him loudly on the forehead. The red head under his chin turned her face enough to giggle through her tears. The girls pulled away and Gwen ushered them all inside, having Peter drop the saddle bags and his backpack on the kitchen table.

            Even though they all wanted to be in the same room since he’d only just gotten home, Peter couldn’t bear the thought of making his whole pack smell like horse and road stink. He left them to go through everything he’d bought at the market and his loot from Deadpool’s household.

            He stripped, setting each of his weapons on the shelf he always left them when home. But he kept his hip knife as he slunk to the bathroom. The water here always ran hot thanks to the hot spring, so Peter sunk into the tub gratefully.

            He stayed in the hot water for a long, long time, only noticing its passing to the rhythm of water droplets from the tap. By how many times his mind circled back to Wade.

            The whole ride had been that way. Riding wasn’t exactly the most titillating, didn’t do much to stop a wandering mind. Kind of encouraged it, actually.

            Sure, he’d daydreamed of home. He’d let his mind wander to what he figured the girls were doing at certain points during the day. If MJ had finished the crochet project she’d started before he left. If Michelle was still eyeing the goats like she wanted to set them on fire, because they’d taken to trying to eat electrical wiring. If Gwen was making any progress in teaching Miles, her protégé, that critical thinking about books no one read anymore mattered. But his mind always found a way to Wade.

            It was always little things, because Peter hardly knew him well enough to know the big things. He’d be relaxed back in the saddle, watching the miles and miles of snow, through tented lenses so he didn’t go blind, and his eyes would catch on a pocket of dark blue sky through the clouds, then he’d spend hours comparing it to the shade of Wade’s eyes. He’d hear the wind howl and he snarl back like he was playing a game, like Wade would flash his teeth back.

            He hadn’t let himself digest anything from his time with Wade though. Had purposefully not allowed himself to think about how Wade had made him feel because it made his chest hurt too much, made him feel like he’d stuck his finger in an electrical plug and not in a good way. It hurt. He’d hurt enough, thank you.

            His time with Wade had been short, had been insignificant. It wasn’t worth his time. He’d been used plain and simple. Wade didn’t -would never- want him. He had been useful for a time, he wasn’t anymore.

            Gwen came in to find him after a while, her scent instantly softening when she caught his dower mood. She sunk down to her knees outside the tub and washed his hair for him.

            Peter’s pack was a strange one. All omegas and none of them related. It’s unheard of. Alphas made packs. They collected scent and blood bonds and protected them fiercely.

            In today's day and age, the only way a pack was head by an omega with only omega members, was if one of them was the birth parent of the rest and their alpha or beta partner died.

            Though the odds of omegas ever ending up with a beta are slim. Betas are nearly infertile. And omegas, male and female, are both rare and can birth children. Alphas with money usually scoop up as many as they can, whether they are born of money of not.

            Peter had met MJ when they were both young. They’d presented as omega at birth and had gone to the same etiquette schools. They hadn’t been all that close when Peter ran away.

            He’d met Michelle on the street. She was few years older and practically dragged him into her shelter after a few years of watching him teach himself to pick pockets, to go from a people-shy, prissy little omega to a dirty, lying, stealing street rat that still nearly froze himself to death every winter, and only managed to avoid it by traveling south, close to the radiation zones. She’d nearly beaten him to death with a shoe when he told her, yelling that if he wasn’t a mutant, he’d be fucking dead.

            Gwen had been a surprise. She was no less than a genius and when she caught Peter and Michelle in her house she nearly blew them off the face of the earth with her chemistry set. But she wanted out as much as Peter had. So instead of stealing some food as he and Michelle had planned, they stole everything of value from Gwen’s room, including the girl herself. She had been the one to lead them to their current residence, it was an old property, something her father had never even actually been to. It was thought impossible to get to once the main entrance collapsed in a storm when she was a child, but she theorized that there had to be a second entrance.

            Five years ago, the three of them had been out at the spring festival when Peter and the girls ran into MJ. She’d cried her eyes out, told Peter that everyone had said he was dead, his parents’ pack had been lost at sea, and everyone had thought Peter was with them. It had been a shock. Peter had walked around for the rest of the month-long festival in a daze, and by the end of it, they walked away with a trunk of pick pocketed things and some carry-on luggage in the form of a bright-eyed and bushy tailed MJ.

            Michelle eventually came to trade places with Gwen. Sitting outside the tub as he soaked.

            “MJ thought you might not come back,” she drawled plainly uncorking the tub, but leaning over to poke through the scent basket at the foot of the tub for the next batch of water.

            Peter shivered as he watched the dirty water drain away, “You know I always come back.”

            She shot him a dark look under her lashes, her warm brown face was slightly pale around her concern though she tried to hide it by looking away, “Hard to come home in a coffin.”

            Peter dipped his head back against the edge of the tub, using his toes to recork the tub when it was empty and kick the water on again.

            Michelle only added a subtle splash of something flowery to the water, turning off the nob when it was full. She eyed the hand shaped bruises, and Peter let her work out her assumptions. She was the best of them at reading people, she always read Peter perfectly.

            She looked him in the eye, “You should have brought one of us with you,” she says sternly.

            Peter blinked tiredly, “You all had things to do. I was expendable.”

            She grabs his wrist, holding just below the fading bruises and holding them up him, “Not this expendable, Peter.”

            “Yes, ‘This Expendable Peter’,” he sneered, wrenching himself away too fiercely from her loose grip, holding the offended limb to his chest. Hurt was bubbling up from his chest, he wasn’t sure from where, just something deep down.

            “They caught you,” she said, not asked. “They hurt you. Maybe they threatened to do worse.” Peter couldn’t look at her. “You did something else? You changed their minds somehow...” she went quiet, deducing. “Someone was in rut. You joined them willingly. At least most of the time. They had large hands, most likely a man-”

            “Michelle.” Peter gasped, his eyes clenched shut and his body closing in on itself.

            “You didn’t fight him,” she whispered kinder. “No defensive bruising. But I know you, you wouldn’t have let him touch you unless you wanted them to. If they threatened you, you would have threatened back. You’re a bonehead like that.”

            Peter flinched when she reached for him, but he followed her hand on his head until his cheek pressed to her shoulder, his nose touching softly to her neck. He wrapped his wet arms around her, and she didn’t flinch. She liked to pretend she didn’t need to scent or be touched, but she tucked her nose against his neck too.

            “Why didn’t you fight back?” she whispered.

            His heart lurched, “Our scents were compatible, I went into a sympathetic heat. His pack wanted me to knock out an alpha who’d gone feral, but I couldn’t. So I- I-“ he started shaking against her.

            “I’m so sorry, Peter.” 

            “He didn’t force me. I wanted to do it. I figured they’d kill me either way. I wanted… I don’t know what I wanted... I’ve shared heats before, even been in a sympathetic heat, but he was- he was different. It than it was than it had been with Norman... He was unbalanced, feral. He bruised me but it didn’t hurt, because it was his hands on me. He was sweet. He was slow. It was…”

            She tightened her arms around his shoulders, silent as she thought, and when she loosened her arm and let him lay back in the water, she studied his face from the corner of her eye as she considered everything he’d said.

            The water started to cool. Peter rinsed his hair one more time before he let the water drain away. Michelle left him to dry off and when he went to the main bedroom, MJ had left him a warm change of clothes.

            Like most packs did, the four of them shared the master bedroom pretty much year-round. In the winter months, it was just practical. It was pointless to heat four different rooms at night, six months of the year, when body heat and a good curtain around the bed was more than enough, especially with blankets. In the other seasons, it was less of a necessity for heat and more of an instinctual desire. Packs kept you safe.

            Peter was too tired to be hungry and instead of going to the kitchen, he just crawled into the unmade bed. He smiled to himself when he rolled over the crochet blanket MJ had finished while he was gone. It should have been too dark for anyone to see in here, but Peter has very good eyesight. Michelle said he was super human, he said she just though so because she needs glasses.

            Gwen was the first to join him, she bundled up closed and tucked her head under his chin and just held him for a very long time. MJ cuddled against his back, and Michelle spooned right in behind her, but reached over to hold Peter’s hand.

            Peter was almost asleep when MJ muttered, “Thank you for not being dead.” Gwen groaned. “It _sucks_ without you here.”

            Michelle laughed, “You just say that because then we have to take turns on the compost.”

            “I hate it, Peter. It gets under my nails and takes forever to wash away,” she admits, “Please never leave again.”

            “Yuppy,” Michelle says in a cough.

            “I think you mean delicate omega,” she replies primly, but there’s a playful smile in the shape of her mouth against his shoulder.

            “I will bite you,” Gwen groans sleepily.

            Peter nuzzles her hair line, “Shh, guys don’t wake the mama bear before the end of winter. She _bites._ ”

            The three of them fall into a fit of giggles as Gwen growls in frustration and swats at them with one of the dozens of pillows. But in the end, they settle down before they really set her off, she’s grumpy when sleepy.

            With a smile in his face, Peter’s really glad to be home.

 

 

 

 

            Steve Roger’s and Bucky Barnes deserve a metal. Like something really nice. Michelle had introduced Peter to them, saying he was like them. But, Steve and Bucky had been on the fence about her assessment, their only argument to say that he c _ould be_ was that he’d gotten so close to the radiation zone and not died. His vison and climbing abilities were better than most people, but they didn’t think it was superhuman.

            No, _they_ were superhuman. Could lift things no man could dream of, run faster than men should have been able to, and if they ever got cut, it healed in seconds.

            But their real feat was just being great human beings.

            Peter and his pack were runaways, worse than that because they were thieves. And then you add the title of omega to the mix, and you got something that needed to be ‘broke.’ Something that was either killed or handed over to the firm hand or bonding bite of an alpha who would teach them their place.

            Steve, even though he was an alpha, wasn’t like that. He saw people when he looked at them. Just people.

            Bucky, well he saw a bunch of harlots, but harlots that got cold and needed to eat more.

            Bucky was fussing over them as they rode together in the carriage, and Steve just tried to keep from passing out. “For the love of _God_ , Peter. We’re going out in public. You’re supposed to wear clothes!”

            Peter leaned back in his seat and flashed his pretty, polished canines, “I am wearing clothes, Bucky bear. You just have to stop staring at my legs to see them.”

            Steve was practically scarlet and had a firm hand over his mouth, but whether it was to keep from laughing or keep the evil from invading his body, the world may never know.

            Michelle handed over Peter’s silk cover and he stooped to slip it on over his outfit.

            There were generally two sets of ideals when it came to how omegas were supposed to dress. Either they had to be modest for their head of house, wore fitted clothes, meticulous and extravagant, but they covered their limbs. Obviously, Bucky agreed with that fashion sense, but there was the flip side to that ideal.

            Peter’s game relied on it. He was an expert pick pocket, and the element of distraction was always the best part in Peter’s mind.

            When they arrived at the Spring festival’s opening night, it was Steve who lead them in. He was the last in a line of very wealth men, and thus was formally invited to something Peter’s pack couldn’t have hoped to get into without a formal head to lead them.

            Thankfully, Steve wasn’t as noble and well-mannered as people were led to believe. Also, his secluded lifestyle kept other elite from finding out all but one of his gaggle of omega’s weren’t actually his.

            Once inside the party’s confines, Peter and MJ split off from the group. She wanted to touch up his hair, and he needed a moment to compose himself. They sequestered themselves in the first bathroom they found.

            MJ sat him on the sink counter and went about adding pins and shiney, pretty things to the elaborate braid she’s painstakingly crafted. “I don’t know why I let you people drag me away from my calling,” she sighed, “I could have been so famous. The best hair stylist in the world, yup that could have been me.”

            Peter leaned forward and kissed her cheek, “No one’s stopping you from leaving us,” Peter said frankly.

            She pouted a lip but tucked down his chin to add more things to her creation, “You’re supposed to beg me to stay.”

            Peter looked up despite her protest, grabbing her shoulders with both hands and looking her directly in the eye. “If you want to leave, Mary Jane, all you have to do is say so. We’d miss you, but the whole reason our pack works is because we saw where we were going, and we didn’t like it. So, we chose something else. You can choose something else, MJ. We’ll still love you no matter where you go.”

            Smiling softly, Peter could see the mutual love in her eyes, “I’m not going anywhere, Pete. You know I just like to complain. I love my pack. I love you.” she kissed his cheek, “Now let me fix your hair so I can go have pretty alphas buy me drinks ‘til I pass out in Bucky’s arms.”

            “A party girl until the very end,” Peter rolled his eyes with a smile, ducking his head as she added her finishing touches.

            She took his silk covering as she left, blowing a kiss before Peter locked the door. He leaned against it for a long moment. Felt the his own weight the way he did before a fight. Found he center of balance, found the enemy… he rose his eyes to the mirror.

            Humming he stepped up to it. Admired the pretty omega staring into his eyes. Light make up and lighter clothes. His dress was white and nearly transparent, yet still exposed almost the whole of his back with a delicate drapery that framed just over his lower back. The front too draped, a taboo even for male omega, but Peter had filled in the gap between his chin and belly button with a plethora of delicate gold jewelry. Each hanging lower and lower.

            He had ornate bicep wrings on each delicate arm and bangles clattering around one of his ankles, the thigh of the other strapped with an ornamental holster and knife, on easy display because of the high cut thigh slits on each side. His long, pale legs unburdened by hair due to his omega nature.

            He was also barefoot. Which held some semblance of meaning about fertility.

            All in all, Peter looked like something on display. And with the leather collar emblazoned with Steve’s family crest, that implied Peter as his concubine, not blood bound but still his omega. Adding that with Peter’s outfit, it looked like he himself was sending Peter out to be admired, maybe even touched.

            Peter had learned enough about elite culture to know what he had to do to set a heartbreaking trap. But he wasn’t looking for a fortune, all he wanted was pocket change. He wanted a game.

            His hair was elegant in its braid and decoration, something Peter wouldn’t have worn in his every day. It was emboldening the same way it was terrifying. He was almost someone else’s possession once.

            But he’d changed that. He was his own man now. He decided what he wore, where he went, who he could love, how he could live.

            The only reason he looked like he belonged to someone else was because he painted the disguise, he put on the mask.

            Slowly he felt himself putting all his emotions that needed to be protecting down in the emotional ceiler, and now he just had to walk out into the storm.

            Peter stepped from the bathroom and ignore the length of the line outside as he wove his way through the crowd.

            He spotted Gwen and MJ in the first bar, they were dressed more to Bucky’s liking, but they were still getting some moderate attention batting their eyelashes at the young alphas at the end of the bar.

            Michelle was out in the busy courtyard. It was a warm night with clear skies, and she was taking advantage of it to watch the stars with all the other onlookers, but Peter could see her eyes flick his way as he passed. She smiled through the gloom and he smiled something pretty as he lifted a coin from someone jacket as she watched.

            It was subtle, but he could see the glint in her eye as he apologized for tripping to the wealthy beta and bowed away.

            He continued up to the high bar, center most of the Stark’s sprawling city. There he met the first guard he’d seen other than at the entrances for the party. This bar was for elite alphas, or betas and their pack only.

            “Sorry,” Peter said sweet and meek, a naive contrast to the sultry outfit, “My alpha is in there. Big and blond. Steve Rogers.” He lifted his chin submissively, saw the alpha guard’s pupils dilate as he stared down Peter’s form before latching his eyes on the collar.

            He checked over his shoulder and easily saw Steve sitting at a stool height table with Bucky and a severe looking red headed woman. “How’d you get separated, little omega? You’re alpha must not be keeping a close eye on you,” he leered. Peter let his scent perfume like he was nervous and watched the alpha guard laugh. “Go on little one, run on in.” He let Peter pass and the omega had use all the will in his body not to push the guard down the stairs when he reached back and smacked Peter’s ass.

            Apparently, the Starks have been skimping on professional employees. The getup was for the guests! This kind of attention made Peter’s work harder.

Now people were looking at Peter and the guard like they were a spectacle. Peter needed passive eyes unless he was engaged with someone, needed others to look away while distracting marks’ eyes to where he needed them. But they wouldn’t be casual on lookers anymore, they’d be assessing.

            Instead of roaming the open sky bar, like he’d planned, Peter beelines it for Bucky and Steve.

            Bucky had spotted him the moment he was at the top of the stairs, but the woman was the next of the three to notice his approach. Her eyes were critically, but not judgmental. When he was close enough, he could smell she was a beta. Bucky scooted closer to Steve and Peter took the hint and slipped close to the omega’s side taking the chair on that side rather than on Steve’s.

            Peter put on a docile face and turned to the woman with a slight smile. Looking weak and a little vague.

            The woman leaned forward in her chair and propped her chin up in her hand without a word. Peter lowered his eyes and peeked up at Bucky like he was worried he’d done something wrong. Bucky just sighs and rolls his eyes. Muttering, “Kids these days.”

            Steve laughs, open and friendly. “I told you he’s a handful, Nat.”

            “I don’t know Rogers,” the woman laughs slightly, “I think he’s a lot more trouble than you give him credit for.”

            “Loads more trouble,” Peter agrees catching wind of an ally. “You should see me naked. It’s my best disguise yet.”

            The woman’s green eyes sharpened like a predator’s as she leaned back in her seat. She blinked then turned to Bucky, “Oh you two must get along so well.”

            Bucky leaned back in his seat too with a smirk. “Like a snake and a honey badger.”

            “Natasha Romanoff,” the woman introduced herself, “I’m a friend.” Steve and Bucky nodded subtly that it was true.

            A waiter came around and took their order, Steve ordering for Bucky and Peter since that was what expectations were while they were in the high bar.

            Natasha ordered for herself. The waiter didn’t seem surprised that she had been let into the bar unsupervised by her head of household, just took her order and left. Her head of house hold is either very wealthy, or she is herself from money, maybe both.

            “So, Steve says you’re good at slight of hand,” she asks softly.

            Peter shrugs, “I only ever go for one thing.” He flicks his fingers bringing up the coin he’d lifted earlier between his fingers. “Just one or two at a time. People like this don’t miss it, and I need it. Soo.” He shrugs again and flicks his fingers again, dropping the coin back to his palm. “I’m not saying its noble. I’m just saying it’s what I’m good at.”

            The beta licked her lips, “You have other skills too?”

            “A girl has her secrets,” Peter answered, the confession making her smirk.

            She turned to Steve, “How come you haven’t introduced us before? I like him.”

            Steve seemed proud of her approval but shook his head, “You two go about life similarly but to different ends. Making the world pay is _your_ idea of fun, not his. He’s just an adrenaline junky.”

            “I resent that,” Peter and the woman said at the same time making them giggle.

            Her, Bucky, and Steve went back to talking, but after a while it turns a bit coded. They sound to untrained ears like their talking about old friends, but Peter doesn’t buy for one second that Steve has that many friends. Sure, Steve’s a nice person, even a good man, but he’s also a recluse. Bucky wouldn’t call anyone his friend, an annoyance maybe, but not friend.

            Peter keeps his mouth shut, pretends to listen, and sips the spiced wine Steve ordered him and checks for eyes on him through the reflections on his glass.

            When Peter spots them, he nearly faints from his high chair. And thank god he doesn’t because that would not be a fun drop.

            Instead, he chugs the rest of his wine.

            He turns to Steve, “Alpha-“ Steve’s eyes cut to someone approaching over Peter’s shoulder, the big man stiffening slightly. Peter’s blood runs cold, but he closes his eyes and settles his scent. He can’t afford to be anything but poised.

            Peter’s eyes open softly, a carefully beautiful thing in Peter’s seat instead of something terrified.

            “Hello,” a young woman’s voice curls into Peter’s ear. Her natural afro left to its full beauty only braided lightly near the temples, and her attire speaks of a beta well maintained by her head of house. Her warm russet skin is undisturbed by jewelry but there is a solid, white diamond shaped tattoo over one of her eyes, and from this close he can see the eye underneath is a stunning honey gold, the other a dark brown. “Want are the odds a girl like me would run into a boy like you here of all places?”

            She sits in the seat next to Peter without invitation, ignores the protectiveness blooming like spikes in Steve’s and Bucky’s scents. But their scents do deter from the subtle hit of Wade’s scent she almost purposefully wafts as she waves for the waiter.

            “Must be lucky,” Peter says flatly.

            She smiles something coy, and orders for the whole table when the waiter comes over.

            Bucky is nearly foaming at the mouth at this point, but Peter reaches over and tangles his fingers with the man’s, asking for just a little more time.

            The beta seems to only just notice the mood at the table so she turns on Peter before they kick her ass, “We need to talk, little omega, ” she rushes.

            “So, speak,” Peter nearly snarled.

            “You don’t want what I had to say, said in polite company,” she said plainly, but something about them has Peter more scared than he should be. He didn’t tell Steve or Bucky about Wade, but there was more implied by that sentence than that, but she wasn’t forthcoming about it. It sent a shiver up Peter’s spine.

            “No,” Peter said sliding off his chair, Bucky quick to follow and pull an arm over his shoulders. “The polite company will leave then. Stay. Have your drink.”

            She frowned and leaned back in her seat, “You don’t think you know what you’re doing.”

            “Then spit it out,” Peter pressed.

            She frowned deeper, holding her metaphorical cards close.

            “ _I think_ we’re done here,” Steve snarled, standing and gesturing the rest of the group away. Taking his place as Peter’s alpha, Steve placed a hand on Peter’s back to lead him and Bucky down the stairs.

            Peter had to physically clasp his hands together in front of himself to keep from slapping the alpha’s hand away. Thankfully, Steve was a better actor than he let on, his scent angry and protective enough to keep the beta from attempting to following.

            But Peter can’t help himself, he looks back.

            Their eyes connect. Something dark flashes in her eyes. A frown pulls down.

            It feels like a warning.

            He has no context for how he knows that’s what she’s trying to convey. But he knows it.

            He faces forward again.

 

 

 

 

 

            They make it about halfway to the hotel attached to the party when Peter shakes him off, “Steve- Steve stop.” They’re a few feet from the entrance, but far enough away not to be making a scene. “Look, go back to the party. There’s no reason-“

            “Peter, stop.” Bucky orders. Peter clicks his mouth shut with wide eyes. Bucky blinks like someone slapped him, “You’re not okay, Peter.” He turns to Steve and Natasha, “Go round up the girls he needs his pack.”

            Steve hands over the room key to Bucky with a kiss before walking off with Natasha.

            Bucky rewraps Peter under his arm and marches Peter toward the stairs, they could take the elevator, but Bucky is uncomfortable in small spaces like that- Steve isn’t much better either, he was attacked in one once. However, their room is one of the penthouses as a sign of Steve’s wealth, which has the added benefit of having more than enough room for both packs to spread out over their three-week stay, but that means _a lot_ of stairs.

            They make it up, but Peter is winded, his thighs good and ready to fall off.

            Bucky lets him take a breather once they get to the hall.

            Tired as he is, Peter’s armor is starting to chip. “Bucky bear,” he gasps, “Will you carry me? I make pretty luggage. Throw me over your shoulder.”

            Peter swears Bucky smiles for half a second at that. “You look more like a floozy to me.”

            “Ugh, that’s the _point_. ‘You can catch many a thing with honey,’ ” Peter quotes as Bucky pulls Peter back up to his feet. Poignantly not throwing Peter over his shoulder, just walking away like a _bastard_.

            “Who told you that? I don’t like the idea of you being honey.” He unlocked the door and led Peter in.

            “My omega etiquette teacher, I think he’s dead now,” Peter said blandly, not bothering with the lights as he walked into the dark living room, the balcony was open. A fresh breeze brushed Peter’s skin nearly raw. “He didn’t exactly teach from the handbook. Taught me lots more than anyone else would have. The power of a lie.” Peter stepped up the balcony doors, closing them softly. “Showed me how to control my scent, how to make it into a weapon. Showed me that _I_ was a weapon. That being an omega didn’t mean I was meant just for babies and laying on my back, but if I played my cards right that even those things could be used against someone.”

            He turned to find Bucky watching him from the middle of the room with horror in his eyes, “Jesus, kid. Didn’t he teach you there are good people out there too? You don’t have to be…” he shook his head, “You don’t always have to be a weapon.”

            Peter smiled softly and played a card that he knew like a blade, every omega had a similar sob story, Peter had just once been at the right place at the right time to hear Bucky’s. “We don’t get a choice when we’re that young, Bucky. _You_ didn’t get a choice. Your first alpha wanted you, so Zola stole you.” Bucky’s face went pale. “We don’t all have a Steve Rogers to save us.”

            Peter’s fingers rose to the faded scars over one of his shoulders. Ten years’ worth of fading between now and then, they were nearly silver, his skin too pale to make them little more than faint discontinuities. But once, he’d nearly had his shoulder bitten clean through by someone who was supposed to take care of him. Someone who was supposed to love him.

            But Norman had been cruel. Evil. The kind of monster Peter didn't mind having their blood under his nails as long as they were gone for good. As long as Peter didn't have to keep looking over his shoulder, and he doesn't. Not anymore.

            “My teacher knew who I was promised to, knew I needed more than his usual teaching would offer.” Peter lowered his eyes as he fisted his hands in front of himself. “I still need it.”

            “You need help, is what you need,” Bucky sighed, “Like real mental health help.” He turned and walked back the front door, “I’m gonna go hurry Steve. Don’t do anything stupid.”

            Peter flashed his teeth, “Don’t tempt me.”

            Bucky shook his head as he stepped out, muttering darkly, “At least it would be your choice.”

            Peter walked over to the sturdy, wooden coffee table and sat on it, picking out all the pretty things from his hair.

            When he closed his eyes, he wasn’t surprised to feel a deep blue ocean of tears ready to fall. He wasn’t surprised by the hollow ache in the middle of his chest.

            The front door clicked open.

            It wasn’t Bucky.

            It wasn’t the girls.

            Peter’s hands froze in his hair before one of them dropped to his thigh. His fingers curled around the handle of his knife as he turned over his shoulder.

            The large man in the foyer, almost absently admiring the pot of flowers on the circular table in the middle of the room, was not Bucky or Steve. There were obvious swords strapped to his back, and as many visible knives on the man as Peter would have liked on himself, but there was also a pair of handguns on his hips.

            He was dressed head to toe in red.

            Peter swayed a bit when the smell hit him, when the alpha’s scent blasted through him like he was made of tissue paper. He almost whimpered.

            It confirmed something he was afraid of.

            He’d had an idea when the beta had been close enough to wave the scent in his face.

            Peter wasn’t scent bonded to Bucky or Steve, he could smell them, spent long hours with them from time to time, but the inherent presents of their scents did not play a role in Peter’s wellbeing. His body didn’t react to those scents, every reaction to their scent was conscious and deliberate. His pack’s scent affected him unconsciously, made him purr or growl or need to brush their hair, and he had to fight harder than he’d have to do otherwise unless giving in was an acceptable thing to do.

            But Peter had spent the last seven months as far away from the alpha in the next room as he could get. Any scent bonds forged in the alpha’s rut should have faded. Compatibility of scents couldn’t have kept them alive, and without either of them suffering from biological imperatives, compatibility wouldn’t affect them in the slightest other than Peter and the man opposite would be able to read each other’s scent with better ease.

            Unfortunately, there was a spanner in the works. Peter could feel his shoulders dropping and an unjust sense of ease loosen the muscles in his back. The alpha was calm and collected and Peter’s body was trying to force Peter to calm down.

            He was still scent bound.

            Somehow that female beta had figured it out, had tried to warn him.

            Peter tighten his fingers on the handle of his blade and went back to pulling the decoration from his hair, trying to maintain his cool as the alpha in the next room milled around the foyer, pretending he couldn’t smell Peter in the next room. Even stopping to check the tags on the stacked luggage and trunks outside the bedroom door, moved there from their carriage by the hotel staff while all of them were in the festival.

            Peter finished with all the decoration as the alpha fingered the lock of the top bag.

            Looking for a reaction, Peter leaned back on his hand, tilted his shoulders and let his head fall back to expose the long line of Peter from neck to stomach decorated with pretty jewelry. He perfumed his scent, lacing it with so much arousal, he smelled like he’d hit a real bonafide heat right then and there for his alpha.

            It felt like loading a gun and hold it to his own head. He had no idea if the test would prove that the alpha was still scent bound to him, but it proved that Peter was. The strength of the perfume, the hint of the alpha’s scent mimicked almost to perfection.

            As far as weapon’s went. It was certainly double edged.

            He saw the moment the scent reached the alpha. Saw the alpha actually stagger back like Peter had punched him in the nose, and when he turned to Peter, he staggered his way a few steps before he caught himself.

            The mask didn’t hide the way he stared at Peter, traced down Peter’s sprawl like he was staring at something he could have eaten whole.

            Peter internally screamed frustration and confusion. His alpha was still scent bound to him too.

            He let his scent settle, not that the sealed room let it escape. No, it kept it surrounding them.

            The alpha leaned against the wall to the foyer, cutting off Peter’s exit. “Been a while, little omega,” he said after a while, “But that’s not a nice trick.”

            Peter didn’t answer, didn’t know how. He lowers his eyes, watched the alpha’s boots.

            It felt wrong to hear his alpha’s voice but not see his face. Not that Peter thought he was any better prepared to deal with Wade’s dark blue eyes than Deadpool’s stoic mask. But it seemed fair that Wade gets to wear his mask too, Peter’s is just a little less obvious.

            The alpha huffs when Peter doesn’t engage. He pushes off the wall and steps into the living room to close the space between them. Peter slides up to his bare feet, looking up at the alpha as he steps up into Peter’s space, his fingers sliding his knife partially out the holster just enough to make it easier to pull out in a flash.

            In his boots, the alpha stands a few inches taller than Peter remembers. With all his gear strapped to him, he looks stronger and more powerful than Peter remembers.

            It just makes Peter scared. He’s scent bound to this man. To someone he didn’t remember the details of, someone he never knew enough about to begin with. Someone who kills people for money. Someone who kills people for money and came to Peter when he was alone, strapped with all the tools of his trade.

            The alpha lifts a hand.

            Peter lifts his too, his knife under Deadpool’s chin in less than a blink of an eye.

            A gloved hand cups Peter’s cheek, “Your scared.” He paused to swipe a thumb over Peter’s cheek bone, “If I had wanted you dead, little omega…” He says with a smile in his voice before chuckling,

            Peter huffed, anger leaching into every word. “Really? You seem like the kind of man to play with his food.”

            The alpha laughed lowly and removed his hand from Peter’s face just long enough to pull his hand free from his glove. But instead of reaching for Peter’s face he reached for Peter’s hair, pulling free the strip of ribbon keeping it tied. Then the alpha ran his bare fingers through the braid to loosen it enough for it all to start unraveling. The long locks tickled down a good few inches passed Peter’s shoulders.

            When the alpha touch Peter’s face again, the omega had to fight himself from nuzzling into it, his heart beat picking up a manic energy.

            The alpha’s scent darkened with interest. He shifted closer to Peter ignoring the blade Peter had held to his throat. The alpha’s hand went to the back of his own head and Peter growled a fierce noise, his teeth bared, but the mask shifted. Then Deadpool was pulling it off.

            Dark blue eyes met his.

            Peter felt his scent changing for Wade, even as he struggled to control it.

            “Why are you here,” Peter meant to growl, but it came out breathy and weak. He pressed the blade to the alpha’s throat and felt it break the skin, just a nick, but it drew blood all the same.

            Wade didn’t flinch, his eyes digging craters in Peter’s self-control, “What if I told you some very bad men paid me a very large sum of money to murder a certain alpha? One currently holding up in this very hotel room with his harem of omegas.”

            “I’d say bullshit,” Peter rose his chin defiantly, even if his voice still shook. “Steve is a good man. Why would someone want him dead?”

            Wade smiled something dark and wicked, something that had Peter more on edge than ever. “You’d be wrong.” Wade’s fingers curled down Peter’s jaw, tucked into his hair and his thumb angled Peter’s head back further.

            And Peter saw it coming. Saw Wade leaning down, and his heart beat out of his chest. He had a knife to Wade’s throat. He had his teeth bared. He was angry and he was scared. But that part of him he’d learned to control, to wield and sharpen and wield again, was always meant to be his first weaken. It was his tool, but it was also his poison.

             He saw Wade leaning down to kiss him, and he met him halfway.

            Peter was the one to bite his way onto Wade’s mouth, to lath his tongue into the slick heat of a kiss Peter could almost feel killing him. Fire chasing ice up his skin. Crystals of light exploding inside his chest.

            He doesn’t feel hollow. He’s full. Bright and teeming with potential energy like a ticking bomb. Like a ticking bomb with an accelerating timer.

            He mewls against Wade’s mouth when the man wraps a vice like arm around his back as he lifts one of Peter’s legs over his hip, and he jumps to wrap the other leg around too. He locks his ankles and wraps his arms around Wade’s shoulders kissing deeper into his mouth as Wade purrs from deep within his chest, a purr of his own ripping through his stomach like it’s all he has left.

            Wade drops them onto something with give, Peter thinks it’s the couch, but he can’t think- _Can’tthinkCan’tthinkCan’tthink._ He just needs Wade, can’t stop. Don’t stop.

            Wade’s big hand grabs a handful of Peer’s thigh and grips hard, digging his fingers deep into the muscle. Peter forgets how to breathe. Then he whimpers when Wade pulls away to mouth at his throat, all the air bursting through his chest like he’d been drowning, and Wade was pushing the air back into him. Pumping life back into something Peter hadn’t realized had been withering.  

            “ _Ohmygod,_ ” Wade gasped at his throat as he bucked against Peter.

            Once again, Wade snatched Peter’s breath away,

            Wade’s bare hand slide down Peter’s thigh, slipped under the thin material of the dress as Peter arched until him, his hand only finding bare ass since underwear would have ruined the look of it. “ _Fuck._ ” the alpha growled, his voice thick with arousal as he sucked deep bruises on Peter’s collarbones, “You’re so fucking hot. The perfect omega. So perfect.” He grazed his fingers between Peter’s cheeks. Peter couldn’t produce slick when not in heat, but Wade didn’t let it stop him from teasing at Peter’s hole.

            “For you, alpha. All for you,” Peter babbled. “No one else, only you alpha. Only _my alpha_ -“

            Peter heard the words the same time Wade did. They froze in the same second.

            Wade’s scent nearly burned against Peter’s lungs, and the sentiment was matched by the furious intent in Wade’s eyes when he rose enough to stare at the leather collar around Peter’s neck.

            Instead of cowering, anger broke over Peter. He leveraged his foot enough on the back of the couch to kick them over the edge.

            Peter landed on top of Wade and drew one of Wade’s own weapons since he lost his, only god knows where. Wade’s blade was hooked, meant for slicing, it fit perfectly in Peter’s hand as he held it to Wade’s throat as he sat on the man’s chest, pining one of Wade’s arms against the couch inadvertently. The other hand was still up Peter’s dress, tight against Peter’s hip digging in painfully, his nails like stab wounds even if he didn’t reach for something more dangerous.

            Peter leaned heavily toward the coffee table to keep Wade from throwing him off.

            “ _I_ am not a prize to be fought over Wade!” Peter shouted righteous anger washing everything else away. “I am a human being! Thoughts and feelings, I have those too.” He snarled when Wade tried to buck him off, “NO!” he grabbed Wade’s face with his free hand, not surprised when hot tear tracks flowed down his own cheeks.

            Wade was furious. He wanted to be good for his alpha, but he needed other things more.

            His hands trembled severely as he snarled.

            “Don’t make me hurt you!” Pleaded, his voice breaking, his eyes snapping shut. “Please god, Wade. I can’t do this. I can’t do it, _Alpha_. I don’t want to. Please don’t make me.” He leaned his head closer to his alpha, barely keeping himself afloat. A sob crawling up his throat but he bit back.

            His alpha’s scent softened, the anger draining in one breath. Peter actually sobbed in relief, collapsing into his alpha’s chest.

The knife trembling out of his hands.

            He tucked his nose under his alpha’s chin, and Wade pushed the couch away with his knee to wrap him in both his arms.

            “Omega,” he whispered, nuzzling down against Peter’s ear, “My omega. I’m sorry. Please forgive me, _my omega_.”

            Peter shuttered against him, his sobs easing.

            Wade’s scent tickled sweet and amused.

            “My omega,” he purred into Peter’s ear and got a more powerful shiver in return. He laughed.

            Peter nuzzled his neck, sucking down the wonderful scent of his alpha’s amusement.

            Wade rubbed his bare hand up and down Peter’s naked back, and he arched into the touch before physically stopping himself.

He sat up straight, looking down with as much conviction as he could muster with tear strained eyes, “You can’t hurt him, Wade.”

            The alpha bore his teeth, but didn’t snarl, “If I don’t do it, Babyboy, someone else will. The guy after your alpha is pissed.” Peter couldn’t help the hurt scent when Wade called someone else his alpha.

            Peter rose his fingers up to the leather collar. Wade’s followed, tracing the star pattern embroidered in the material before wrapping around Peter’s fingers and bringing them to his mouth to press a chaste kiss to them.

            “I guess I could always go off script and do the good old fashion double cross. Kill the guy who paid me to kill your alpha.”

            Peter was a bit speechless at that, just swallowed hard and lowered his chin.

            “If I just don’t kill him, someone else will come for him, might even hurt you or someone else in your pack as collateral damage,” he explained, sliding a warm palm against the top of Peter’s thigh, and looking up at Peter like he couldn’t stand the thought of someone else hurting him, physically or otherwise.

            Peter knew most of it was just instinct. A scent bond made him want to protect Peter. His instincts would have him defend Peter like a rabid guard dog if Peter would let him.

            However, it would be difficult but not impossible for Wade to deny it. Yet, Peter could see his alpha being true to his nature, Peter would have been able to smell the deception in his scent.

            It had taken years and years for Peter to learn how to lie and not have his scent betray him. He had to lean into other emotions to do it. Became eerily calm or overly sweet. Forced traditionally omega mannerisms to distract from it. Sometimes it was hard to tell where his mask ended and the real him began, where he stopped pretending and something true to his nature just took control. It felt like a careful balancing act he still sometimes lost.

            Raising his eyes, Peter traced the curve of the fingers on his thigh. He couldn’t help but feel something for Wade. The bond wanted him sweet and pleasing to his alpha but there was more. He felt like Wade understood. That even if the alpha didn’t know him very well, he knew Peter anyway.

            His alpha was smart. A skilled man. Wore weapons, sharp and aplenty. Was a weapon himself even without them, just like Peter. They were two sides of one very pissed off coin.

            Quiet and quick on one side, protective and powerful on the other.

            Spin it fast enough and the two sides become one. Two men looking for something. Looking for the next kill, the next pick. Looking for something more… Peter doesn’t know what exactly he wants other than his pack safe and happy, but he’s starting to think that hollow ache in his chest has been trying to tell him he was looking for Wade. That he was trying to find a way to fit the alpha into his life.

            But try as he might, Peter was too scared to try and imagine his pack and Wade’s merging. It sounding like bloodshed. He could almost feel the girls’ resentment. They’d made their pack to get _away_ from alphas, to rebel against them when it was convenient.

            Michelle wasn’t a every trusting person, she’d be the hardest to convince, the hardest to keep.

            “I have to ask,” the alpha drew Peter out of his thoughts, “How’d he get to keep you?” He pushed up onto this elbow, “Were you his all along? Were you in my house because he asked you to be? If you were his, then why did you- I know you were trapped, but why did you-” Peter could see the hurt plain and simple as he searched Peter’s eyes for answers. “Could I have ever kept you?”

            Peter ran his fingers against Wade’s cheek, the scars a unique texture Peter was never able to find answers for. Not in any of the medical books Gwen knew by heart. And despite how much Peter knew he wanted Wade, he didn’t feel worthy. “I’m not- Wade… I’m not the kind of thing people keep. I’m a so many things I shouldn’t be. Angry. A trickster. A thief. A runaway- I _always_ leave, Wade. Always. I’m broken like that. Omegas are supposed to stay inside, birth all the babies, be sweet, docile things that waste their lives doing _nothing_. I need to be needed, not something an alpha plays with.”

            Wade blinked back tears, licking his lips as he whispered, “I’d never- That’s Steve Rogers’ collar on you neck. _A collar._ ”

            “I know you don’t know me,” Wade snort wetly, “But if there is one thing I know, it’s how to use people’s expectations about what I am against them. Steve doesn’t have those expectations. He gives us the collars as a disguise. We can use them to blend in, to gain access, to stand out. It’s… a weapon.”

            “So,” Wade blinked in surprise, “You’re not his _…_?”

            Peter smirked, “Concubine? No. And don’t say that word too loudly, you’d make him blush.”

            Wade smiled but his scent was still melancholy, but so was Peter’s.

            Slowly getting to his feet, Peter kept his fingers tangled with Wade’s, pulled him up when he needed the help.

            Then they were well within each other’s spaces, Peter looking up and Wade looking down.

            Peter wished he had more words to describe how beautiful he thought Wade was. It wasn’t just the richness of his eyes anymore or the brilliance of his smile. Somehow, he’d found himself smitten with even the texture of the scars on his skin, because it felt so good under his mouth, under his hands. Because when he touched Wade, he touched back.

            Peter picked himself up to his toes and pressed a sweet kiss to Wade’s lips, purred when Wade rose a hand to Peter’s neck.

            When he dropped himself back to his heels and looked up at Wade, he was happy to see something tilting the man’s lips into a slight smile. “You look so proud of yourself,” Wade snorted, making Peter blush.

            He turned to walk away but Wade spun him back against his chest, pressing a deep kiss into Peter’s mouth, a softly hungry thing that made Peter’s knees weak. It didn’t take much more convincing before Peter was kissing back like his life depended on it. Before he was wrapped around his alpha, as the alpha held him like Peter might shatter apart against him. Peter’s hands were shaking and the only thing keeping him upright was his alpha’s stabilizing hand to his lower back.

            Wade pulled away to press their foreheads together, “Tell me, Babyboy. Tell me you’re not just pretending. I- I want to believe it. Do you even want me?”

            “Wade,” Peter’s voice shook, “I’ve never wanted anything more in my life.” Peter nearly collapsed with the fierce truth of it.

            “Then why pretend to be his, when you can really be mine?”

            Peter felt tears in his eyes again, his answer ripped out in a whisper so feather light, he’d be surprised if Wade heard him at all, “Because I’m not ready.”

            Wade pressed a gentle kiss to his temple, “I have more than enough room for all of your pack. Vee and the rest of them will warm up to them really quick, you’ll see. The only really bitchy one in my pack is Weasel, but he’s tolerable once you learn to tune him out. But you take all the time you need, Babyboy. I’ll wait. I’ll wait until the next end of the world for my omega. I’d wait while on fire if I had to.”

            Cuddling against his alpha, Peter let Wade take his full weight of his omega in his arms.

            Time. Peter needed it. Wade was letting him have it.

            They cuddled on the couch as Peter slowing drifted off to sleep. He was almost asleep when Wade slid Peter off to the couch, the omega caught his alpha’s fingers with his clumsy ones. “Sorry to cut this part short, Babyboy-“

            “Peter,” he mumbled grumpily, “I’m Peter.”

            Wade smiled, leaning down to kiss his omega sweety, his scent as honey as he’d ever smelled it, “I gotta go Petey-pie. See you soon.” Then Wade was flinging open the balcony doors, clipping some sort of robe to the metal railing and disappearing over the edge of Peter’s sight just as the front doors opened with a stampede of giggling drunk girls.

            Someone flipped on the LED lights and Peter’s hid his face in the couch cushions to shield his eyes but there was an audible gasp from the door way. By the time he found the courage, Peter was already being manhandled to a seated position. 

            Gwen’s bright blue eyes were wide with concern. “It smells terrible in here, Peter. Are you okay?” She was already checking over his limbs and taking note of all of his bruises. There were more than he realized. The scent in the room was worse than Peter realized too.

            The air in the room didn’t circulate, so Peter and Wade’s interactions were thick in the room. High emotions could increase scent potency and Peter’s scent was almost overpowering. Not to mention, Peter’s heat smell, which was having a visible reaction on Steve who had backed himself to the open doors of the balcony for fresh air.

            But there were more emotions in the scent, Peter had been hurt, angry and crying. Then he’d been docile and obedient.

            The alpha’s scent had stayed soft and calm for most of their encounter, but there was hints of possessiveness, of amusement, of fear.

            Peter was surprised by the last one. But the fear scent was old and recent. Had been present for the whole of their encounter. Wade was scared of Peter. Scared the whole time. And Peter hadn’t noticed.

            Gwen’s face went pale as she noticed the dark bruising on Peter’s hip, the fingernail shaped gouges. “ _Dear god_.”

            Over her shoulder, MJ picked up Wade’s knife from the carpet. The alpha had left it behind.

            Michelle walked over, “Peter,” she frowned, “Now’s the time you tell us _what the fuck_ happened.”

            Gwen’s fingers touched Peter’s collar bone, and Peter flinched, the skin there tender from Wade’s bruising kisses.

            This looked bad.

            This looked really bad.

            “It isn’t what it looks like,” Peter squeaked looking up at Michelle who looked ready to explode. “He wouldn’t hurt me-“

            “Peter,” she growled. “Look at yourself.” She pointed at his molted skin on his hip. “He already hurt you. This is the exact kind of thing you were running away from.”

            “You weren’t there,” Peter insisted, “He could have hurt me. He was covered in weapons. He was holding me to keep _me_ from hurting him. I used his own knife to threaten him, and he didn’t turn on me but to hold me.”

            “It escalates, Peter. It always does. This isn’t healthy.”

            “Pete,” Gwen whimpered slightly, “The alpha? It’s Deadpool isn’t it? He came back.”

            MJ made a terrible sound and crawled onto the couch.

            “He’s dangerous, Peter.” Gwen frowned, and Peter was so, so tired. Any instilled happiness was draining, that hollow feeling crawling up his legs like spiders, wrapping him tighter in their webs, trapping him further and further in the darkness of it all.

            He slowly sunk his head into Michelle’s lap and he could smell his scent going dark with hurt. Felt the girls flinch with it, but he closed his eyes and hid his face in Michelle’s stomach. And the explanation for his pain went unsaid, but he felt it whisper in his scent. Reminded him of something his pack would have him forget about.

            Making his pack shiver all around him with its call, his scent wept honey and fire.

 

 

 

 

 

 

            Peter and his pack slept there on the couch, wrapped and draped over each other. And Peter’s whole body ached when he woke with the sun, but he rolled away from the light and fell back asleep. MJ happily kept him company as she tried to sleep off her drunkenness. Gwen was slow to get up, but she eventually joined Michelle, riffling through their trunks for something to wear.

            Surprisingly, it was MJ who coaxed him out of sleep. She was sweet and teasing, and it was her optimistic scent that convinced him more than anything. Her eyes wide with curiosity, she whispered, “Do you think he’s going to be around?”

            “Who?” Peter grumbled as he wiped the grit from his eyes, MJ pushing him up to a seated position to brush out his tangles with her favorite brush.

            “Your alpha,” she whispered, and Peter tried to detect negativity in her scent, but she was just as innocent as she usually was. Open and honest.

            “I don’t know,” Peter said slowly.

            She pursed her lips, and set down her brush, “Go wash up, then come back. I want to do your hair again.”

            “MJ,” Peter groaned, but she shot him an annoyed look, and Petr didn’t want to deal with her when she felt slighted. “Fine,” he pouted, and slipped into the bathroom for a quick shower.

            When he came out, MJ was dressed and had already styled her hair to perfection. He took his time finding something to wear as Gwen and Michelle came into the room from the dinning area where they had been going over plans for the day.

            “We decided to do rounds,” Michelle informs him.

            “You mean guard duty,” Peter corrected.

            She narrowed her eyes, “You’re scent bound. One of the three of us is a good protection against it. We talked to Steve and Bucky about it and they agreed to escort you when we’re not around. They’re not as good as we are but they know you well enough to know if you’re being manipulated.”

            Peter sighs and leans hard against his trunk. At least his pack would get to meet Wade if he approached. Give them a chance to see how much like Peter Wade is.

            It also insured that things between them would be slow. They’d be forced to step within polite rules and not maul each other or nose at each other’s scent glands without speaking. They’d be able to learn about the other, like normal humans.

            “Fine,” he said turning back to the trunk.

 

 

 

 

            Peter could feel Bucky’s blatant disapproval in Peter’s wardrobe as the younger omega held daintily at his elbow.

            Overnight, the kiss bruises on Peter’s neck and collarbone had darkened to a rich eggplant color and instead of hiding them Peter had dressed around them. He had on a flowing, open, dark blue shirt that billowed off his shoulders and dipped down his stomach until it tucked into the front of his golden pants that flowed like a long skirt with a slit on each leg. Unlike last night, he didn’t wear any jewelry other than Steve’s leather collar and Wade’s black militaristic, hooked, carbon fiber karambit.

            He’d grabbed one of his own karambit’s sheaths and used matching dark blue ribbon to fit the blade to his upper thigh and a safety-pin-improvised loop hidden in the waist of his pants.

            He’d also chosen to go shoeless again.

            But as much as Bucky disapproved of the outfit, he was angrier with Peter because Deadpool had met up with Steve early in the morning as the alpha had been having breakfast with friends, to tell him about the hit out on his life. Peter doesn’t know what exactly was discussed, but Bucky had figured out that Peter knew about it somehow and was furious Peter didn’t warn Steve.

            Peter had been too emotional last night to think to warn Steve, but he felt so guilty he was actually not being a little shit for once. Steve was leading them all around the city, having conversations with people Peter wasn’t allowed near, but Peter was being good. Didn’t pick pocket a single person the whole afternoon.

            MJ had been stuck to his side since they left. She kept getting distracted by every piece of jewelry she laid her eyes on. But she soaked in the details as best she could to recreate them when she got home.

            Steve and Bucky were in the back of the apothecary talking with someone in hushed tones as Peter and MJ perused the far shelves. MJ, who was not the best as first aid or medicine in general, seemed fascinated by the ingredients in front of her. Peter just leaned his head on her shoulder and held her arm and let her lead him where she pleased.

            He was so bored he would have let her lead him off a cliff.

            Peter knew Steve was cooking up something. Crafting some kind of plan to get back at the man who’d paid to have him killed, but Bucky shooed Peter away every time he tried to listen in. Peter could have tried to defy Bucky, but since Bucky was blood bonded to Steve and Peter was only collared, people would have been suspicious.

            Alphas can blood bond with as many people as he is sexually active with and trusts unequivocally, but by collaring instead of biting, he is making sure people know Bucky is special. Blood bonds make them more equal; collaring is socially lower. Peter and the girls were axillary omega. Peter wouldn’t have had the authority to defy Bucky if they were in a pack. Not as trusted as Bucky. But used for child bearing or pleasure as the alpha deems fit.

            Peter fingers at Wade’s knife, tracing the handle idling.

            As a disguise the collar can be dressed up or down as much as Peter wants, but Peter knows that he couldn’t live his real life that way. Being collared. Like a dog. Meant to drop and present any time his alpha wants. He couldn’t live like that.

            There’s less expectation, but what is expected is too much to bear.

            But blood bonds… Peter shuttered. A bond that never fades. Keeping you tied to another person’s will until the day you die. The only saving grace is that they can’t be forged without consent. If the person giving or getting the bite aren’t ready and willing, the chemicals to cement it aren’t released, the bond isn’t made, the scar doesn’t form.

            The door to the apothecary opened with a jingle, Peter didn’t bother to look up, he could see Bucky flick his eyes up and then down as he dismissed the newcomer. If he didn’t see a threat, there wasn’t one.

            “Look, Pete, smell this,” MJ put a jar under his nose before he could respond and his whole body seized as he sneezed a huge nose.

            The store had been quiet before but now it was silent, and when Peter looked up everyone was staring at him. He blushed, muttering, “Sorry.”

            MJ burst out laughing.

            He turned on her whispering angrily, “You’re evil. You got the devil in your heart, girl. You hear me, _the devil_.” She laughed harder.

            He turned away to pout when his eyes caught on irises the same shade as his shirt in the next isle over.

            “I thought it was pretty funny,” Wade said teasingly. He wasn’t wearing his mask, but he was is in a light-colored robe that had a hood he had pulled down to hide most of his scars.

            Peter felt himself smirk as he leaned over the shelf, “Well, you must have the devil in you too,” he growled, flashing his teeth.

            “Just ask nicely, Babyboy. I can put a little in you too.” He was eyeing Peter’s collar and neck with a possessive little smile.

            MJ gasped. Peter put an arm around her to reassure her. “Wade, this is Mary Jane. MJ this Deadpool. Be nice, we’re not going to hurt this one too much.”

            Of all things, Wade actually blushed as hard as MJ.

            “I’m always nice,” MJ smacked his chest light, leaning hard into Peter’s side for support and smiling shily as she reached or the shelf to Wade, “It’s very nice to meet you. Naturally, I’ve heard next to nothing about you, but I’m the hopeless romantic of the pack, so why tell me when love is the air, right?”

            Wade blushed harder, but shook her hand gently, “Petey-pie didn’t even tell me his name until last night, so I understand.”

            MJ gasped in horror, “Peter! How could you!?” If this had been Gwen beside him, Peter was sure this kind of statement would have been followed by open-mouthed horror-gaping that he wouldn’t tell someone his name before sleeping with them. If it was Michelle, she’d beat him with a shoe for giving his name at all, if he had had to give one it should have been fake. But of course, MJ was so young and the sweetest thing on earth, so she just pouted, “He gave you a nick-name and you didn’t tell me?”

            Peter blushed into her hair. He loved his human being.

            When he looked back at Wade, he was staring right at Peter like he could have sprinkled him with sugar and eaten him with his morning tea.

            But because MJ had been basically raised in Peter’s pack his, she said, “Hey, smell this,” and shoved a jar under Wade’s nose.

            The jar went flying when Wade sneezed and accidentally smacked the thing out of her hand. Peter saw Bucky drop his face into his hand from across the room as Wade and MJ cackled like maniacs.

            Steve marched over, “I can pay for that,” Wade said quickly.

            Steve gave the smashed jar a glance but turned back, “Wade we’ve been waiting for thirty minutes, let’s go.”

            Wade nodded before turning to Peter, “Sorry, Babyboy, Captain Got-a-sitck-up-his-ass America is plotting the destruction a very bad man, I gotta run.”

            Peter was just sappy enough to want to reach over the shelf to touch Wade, to scent mark and be marked back so he could smell his alpha on his sleeve for the rest of the day. Thankfully, he wasn’t sappy enough to actually do it. “Don’t trip,” Peter flashed his teeth.

            Wade smiled as he spun on his heel to follow Steve out the back of the store, Bucky came to shepherd Peter and MJ out the front.

            As they walked away from the store, Peter kept MJ close to his side, thankfully she was leaning on him too, her scent light and blissful. It took a moment for Peter to realize so was his. He was happy.

            He smiled into MJ’s hair.

 

 

 

 

            When they stopped for dinner at the heart of the festival. Venders were all over the place, keeping the streets bustling, but they found a table in the heart of the plaza where they could all fit with their hands full of the various plates they’d each picked up separately.

            Michelle was riffling through her bag on her lap as he dropped French fries in her mouth. She was the superior pick pocket of the group, but she didn’t always go for an indiscriminate handful of coins she collected steadily, but she liked to pick jewelry and the like. Hence why they had an abundance of it on hand. She especially went wild with picking when she was upset. And judging by the fancy pen she was doodling on her napkin with, she wasn’t in a good mood all afternoon.

            “I met Wade,” MJ smugly as she bites into something spicy smelling.

            “You covered in bruises too? Gonna put them on display too?” Michelle drawled

            The whole table flinched, maybe even Michelle.

            Peter put down his food and tried to remember how to breathe.

            “You say the sweetest things,” Gwen hisses, “I just love your sweet talk. Tell me, Michelle when was the last time you gave someone a chance, huh? When was the last time you even _thought_ to give someone a chance? I know you don’t like the thought of someone hurting Peter. I’m not saying you have to like it, I’m not even saying you shouldn’t spit in the alpha fuck’s face when you see him. But do you think for just _five fucking seconds_ you could not shit on someone your supposed to love?”

            Michelle nearly snarled, “I’m scared. Aren’t you? You smelled that room, they were terrified. They hurt each other. How the fuck are we supposed to trust what Peter is feeling has anything to do with what he’s feeling and not what is alpha wants him to feel-“

            “Well, it doesn’t work like that for one,” Bucky interrupted.  The girls stared up at the older alpha, but Peter sunk down in his chair. Bucky grimaced but continued, “Steve can’t _make_ me feel anything. His body can ask things of mine, and sometimes we just let instinct take over and it’s easier because we’ve know each other long enough to be comfortable not having to fight for control all the time, but even with the full strength of a blood bond, Steve’s bond can’t just produce all the things necessary to fall in love. Could the alpha be psychologically manipulating Peter? You don’t know Wade, but if he is, it’s not intentional. He’s been through a lot… He’s a bit unhinged, but self-sacrificing.”

            Peter did the only thing he could. He pushed out of his chair and walked away from the table.

            If his pack tried to follow, Peter lost them pretty early on.

            He climbed up the stone facing in a back alley with a running start and traveled the roof tops to avoid the crowds. He ducked around guards and open windows with ease, heard wisps of whispered conversations, saw couples and packs hand in hand, tucked under arms and against sides. Safe and happy under their family’s care.

            He wasn’t jealous, his family loved him, he loved his family, but right now it stung somehow.

            It wasn’t like Michelle hadn’t tried to talk sense into him before. She had. But something about this felt raw to the both of them. She was _so_ against it. And Peter didn’t know where he stood other than he wanted Wade, but he didn’t want to belong to him.

            Peter wanted and he didn’t want. Confusing.

            He itched to think about being trapped and when he rose his eyes his hands were unclipping the leather collar from his neck.

            He held the strip of leather against his palm, the dark leather stark against his skin. He wrinkles his nose at it and had to fight the urge to throw the thing as far as he fucking could. He stuffed it in his pants’ pocket instead.

            And what was he now? What was the disguise?

            He liked to joke that his bare skin was his best disguise, that he could rob an alpha from of house and home with nothing but his smile and a sweet scent. Loki had taught him well. Had showed him how skin was other people’s weakness not his own. And Peter had learned not to be afraid to bare it all if he had to, sometimes he felt his safest when there was no barrier between him and the world.

            But now he felt nude.

            More vulnerable than he’d ever known he could be.

            The wind swept up from below to gust up his pant legs, to billow his shirt about his chest. But he couldn’t feel it against his skin. No. He was more open elsewhere.

            While he hadn’t been looking someone had pulled his heart from his chest and now he wasn’t sure how to protect it.

            The bruises on his collar were something he’d been proud of. A treasure he wanted to share with the world. ‘Look he was here,’ it had said, even as it left the name unsaid. And sure he’d dressed it up as part of a disguise, but he had wanted to show off, to feel special. And just thinking that made him feel sick.

            He thought of the sore hand print on his hip.  Michelle and Gwen were worried about Wade hurting him, thought the bruise was a sign of something darker, and Peter had to agree. There had be something darker under the surface of Wade he hadn’t seen yet, there was one under everyone’s skin.

            Deadpool was a known murder. Doesn’t get much darker than that.

            Yet, the alpha had a pack. Had Vanessa who had been nice as far as Peter could tell, she cared deeply for Wade. Monsters didn’t get that kind of loyalty without earning it. And she had been accepting of Peter in way Peter didn’t think alphas could be. She had known Peter was a thief and had asked him to stay anyway.

            Weasel had been a worm, but the female beta had been kind enough. Tried to tell Peter about the bond without telling him, even if he had run away.

            Peter always ran away.

_Always._

            He could run fast so it only seemed to make sense for a while there. Plus, Peter always knew he was a coward. He wasn’t ashamed to flee if he could. Survival was more important than dignity. Living on the streets, dignity was the first thing to go for Peter.

            Honestly, he’d wondered when he’d get tired of running, when it would stop feeling like the right thing to do. There have always been times running wasn’t an option, and his life always felt like it turned on it’s head afterward. He couldn’t run from his first alpha, he couldn’t run from Michelle, from his pack. Couldn’t run from the changing face in the mirror. The man he had become. He couldn’t run from his first meeting with Wade.

            Bruises and scars. Knives and swords. Having and loosing. Taking and giving. What’s the difference?

            Love and need?

            Hidden and lost.

            Peter slid down the side of the building he’d been perched on, dropping to the cobblestones on silent feet. He wandered from there. Just walked for as far and as long as he could. And by the time the sun rose, Peter had been out all night. He could hardly place the passing of the time until it was shining in his eyes.

            He probably should have gone back to the hotel room then, but he just kept walking, let his mind go where it pleased. Stark’s city was big enough he wouldn’t have to walk the same streets twice, even as his mind went in circles.

            Peter jumped when someone’s hand grabbed his shoulder. He turned already snarling a hateful noise, the alpha on the receiving end back pedaling a few feet.

            “Jesus,” Steve holds his hand to his chest like Peter had snapped at it with his teeth.

            “Peter,” Gwen says softly, “We’ve been looking for you all night.” She looks tired and haggard in way that says it’s true.

            It’s insulting, but Peter keeps himself from snapping at her, even if he steps away when she goes to touch his hand. “I can handle myself. Just go to the room, get some sleep-“

            “Peter you smell terrible, come back with us. We can help,” Gwen’s eyes welled with tears, “We’re your family. We love you. I know Michelle hurt you, but she’s really sorry. Please just come back with us.”

            When Gwen reached for him, he flinched but let her take his hand. She tried to give him a reassuring and hopeful smile, but Peter just hung his head and let Gwen guide him as Steve went out to find the others.

            Gwen tried to make small talk, and Peter tried to indulge her, but everything came out awkward and silted until he gave up.

            In the hotel room Michelle was waiting. Somehow, she looked worse than Gwen.

            In a sense it was actually more soothing than anything else that she acted like she hadn’t been the asshole in their exchange and didn’t throw herself into groveling. Peter wouldn’t have wanted it, and she wouldn’t debase herself like that. If nothing else her attentive stare masquerading as mild curiosity, was just as he needed it to be.

            He went to his trunk and found himself a change of clothes, then went to the bathroom to wash his face and change into something long sleeved and sleep pants. He even took the time to undo his hair, the brown locks crimped and kinked from being braided while damp.

            Gwen was already asleep when Peter came out, but Peter didn’t join her on the couch. He set his dirty clothes to the side and took Wade’s karambit with him to the balcony where he sat against the bars and watched the roof tops and the swarming masses down in the festival’s heart. Most of everyone came for the shopping. New tech, new clothes, jewelry, everything crafted in the long winter months and sold here with fanfare.

            Most of the wealthy came here for the first week to just show off their wealth. Brought their auxiliary omegas if they had them and dolled them up how they saw fit and showed them off. They threw their money around even if the prices were always made higher for the first week.

            The second week the less wealthy finally had a chance to buy while the elite got to actually conducting business. They made deals with other elites, reaffirmed old ones, all that boring crap.

            So, when Peter looked down at all the pretty colors and flourished people, he could rest assured he was looking at the world’s top men and women. He had wandered among them once and been young and foolish enough to think he would be equal to them when he was older.

            Peter didn’t think he’d ever met a single omega he could call his equal. Be them bonded or unbonded, be them comfortable in their bonds or not, he doesn’t think he ever rose to met them. He’d branched off into something else. Something a little more broken. He could pretend all he wanted, but everyone below would always be something strange to him, a part of a world he’d left behind. A world he spent his life trying to exploit.

            MJ’s arrival was a tearful one, she dropped herself into his lap. “Don’t you ever do that to me again, Peter Benjamin Parker you hear me? Never ever ever!” she sobbed into his neck. Peter just held her close and let himself soak in the anger and sadness and relief in her scent, not keeping track of his own. He was too tired to deal with making sure he was being polite.

            His pack hadn’t been able to sleep without him last night. Peter could smell it on them. He swallowed hard around the guilt and counted it as another of his failures.

            MJ fell asleep in his lap and Gwen crawled over with a few plush pillows to join them, falling back asleep with her head under MJ’s shin to block out the rising sun. Michelle sat with her back against the balcony door’s frame and watched the city with Peter.

            “I didn’t grow up like you did,” she said after a while and Peter turned to her, “Grew up my whole life on the street. My ma didn’t know what to do with me when I presented. Couldn’t afford to send me to school, couldn’t keep me safe on the street. She was a beta, wasn’t ever supposed to get pregnant in the first place,” She swiped at her nose, trying to make it look like she wasn’t crying, “Anyway, she tried her best, I guess. Blamed a lot on me when things went wrong. We tried to hide my scent, but my heats kept us on the move. Couldn’t ever stay one place long enough for her to keep her jobs.”

            “She always said she loved me. She’d kiss my bruises and tell me it was going to be okay. We’d get better. Said it would change even if she kept being the one leaving all the bruises.”

            “The first alpha I met, I ran away with. She was nice for a while, but I guess I didn’t ever learn because when she started hitting me too, I thought it was my fault again. That I deserved it. No matter what I did, I thought I deserved it.” Michelle turned her face away so Peter couldn’t see the constant stream of tears. “I’m sorry I was such a bitch. I just saw what he did to you and I-“ her voice broke, “I don’t want you to do that to yourself. If he hurts you once, he’ll hurt you again. If you hurt him once, you’ll do it again. A vicious circle.”

            Trapped under MJ and Gwen, Peter couldn’t rise to touch Michelle so he reached for her as far as he could, touching just the top of her foot because his arm is only so long.

            She wiggled her toes with a wet chuckle.

            “I’m sorry I ran away,” Peter whispered. “I should have stayed and worked it out, it’s just… I needed to be alone. Needed to think, ya know?” She nodded, lifting her wet eyes to meet his. “I don’t know if what I have with Wade is going to work out. It’s… messy. Dangerous. But I think there’s something there. Something I could want.” He slides the karambit out from under his leg, handing it over. “I can’t find the decorative blade I was carrying for the opening night. I think he left this one so he could take that one.”

            He was surprised to see affection swarm her eyes before she blinked it away and she had to bite her lip to keep from smiling, “He traded weapons with you?”

            Peter blushed, “Like he wanted to leave something to remember him by.”

            She rolled her eyes, but couldn’t stop her smile, “So, you guys are using knives to pass love notes? Only you would find that romantic.”

            “No,” Peter smirked, “he does too.”

            “I hate him a little less,” she admitted. “I might still punch him in the gut for hurting you though.”

            Peter sighed and looked back to the swarm of people down below, “Fair.”

 

 

 

 

 

            Peter eventually fell asleep as the sun hid itself over the top of the building. He was warm under the sprawl of the girls, and Michelle had even coaxed MJ over enough to push in beside Peter and rest her head on his shoulder, whimpering slightly when he pressed a sweet kiss to her temple.

            Unfortunately, Peter was the last asleep and the first awake.

            The sun had just set and he had to coax the girls into the room before the steadily dropping temperature could freeze them. It was going to rain. The clouds had rolled in while they were sleeping and the streets down below were starting to clear as the sky got darker and darker, lightening crashing in the distance.

            All of them were still drowsy and warm though. So even with the storm approaching they loused on the couch and cuddled. Michelle being the worse offender. Nosing under all of their chins and purring like she wasn’t the one keeping her distance all the time. Gwen called up room service and ordered finger food because none of them had eaten all day.

            The beta who brought it up had blushed at seeing all of them draped on each other, but Peter growled them away when they lingered.

            Gwen pulled out one of the romance novels Peter had bought in the beginning of winter, the one that had circulated between the four of them a few times during the long stay in their cave. No one put up much of a fuss when she clicked on a light and started reading it out loud. Somehow, the gloom and thunder outside seemed to fit the somber mood of the book. The world about love and loss and the world ending seemed fitting and oddly soothing.

            They all looked up when Steve and Bucky came in dripping wet, smiling like they were young and in love. They didn’t pay any attention to the omegas in the next room as they giggled, kicked the front door closed, and tumbled into the bedroom off the foyer.

            “I really hate them sometimes,” Michelle grumbled, and Gwen swatted her leg but kept reading and the night went on.

            They kept watch over it, like patient sentinels. Keeping track of the tick of the hour by the crashing of thunder, but the flashes of light, by the drawing of each chapter until at last Gwen’s voice gave out and they sat together in the interrupted silence and held close. Held their breath.

            Never in his life had Peter felt such a sense of expectation. Like something was just outside the door, right outside the window, waiting to be found. Waiting to find him.

            Maybe it was the weather. Maybe it was their mood. Maybe they were the ones waiting and the world was just holding its breath for them to pounce on it.

            There was a knock at the door.

            “Woah,” MJ yawned.

            Peter snorted but disconnected enough from the girls to walk to the entrance and peek through the hatch at the top. He choked on his own spit.

            “Hey, Babyboy,” Wade smiled shily through the glass, sans his mask. Vanessa was loitering just behind him.

            There was a little girl sleeping in his arms, her head tucked under his chin and arms looped over Wade’s shoulders. She had short, black hair and was head to toe covered in light pink pajamas. She looked about five or six.

            Peter’s eyes bounced back up to Wade’s, “Um, hello?”

            “Can we come in?” he asked, and Peter glanced over his shoulder to where the girls were watching with interest, but Peter could see Michelle stiffening.

            He turned back around, “I don’t know.”

            Wade nodded solemnly, “Yeah, I know it’s early as fuck in the morning. It’s just Ellie-bean couldn’t sleep with all the thunder and Shiklah hasn’t been resting so good. I just wanted to give her a break, ya know. I didn’t think you got to meet Ellie when you were at the house, and I wanted you to meet her, even if she was grumpy and whatever because she’s the best, but then Ellie passed out on the walk over here from across town, even with all the noise. Guess she just missed me, I-I…” he swallowed hard and tucked his nose down into the girl’s dry hair. “My arms are going to fall off,” he whispered almost too low for Peter to hear, way too low for anyone else to ever hear.

            Shifting weight from foot to foot, he asks, “Is she your daughter?”

            Wade smiled fondly, “My one and only.”

            It’s almost too much. Peter can feel himself wilting away. The Wade’s perfect insecure smile, the warmth of seeing him carrying the little girl.

            Peter’s eyes shifted back over to where Vanessa waved almost sardonically.

            “Give me a second,” Peter shuts the hatch on the door and walks over to his pack, he tries to put on a deploring face but Michelle frowns.

            “He’s out there isn’t he?”

            “He brought his daughter.”

            “He has a kid?” Gwen croaked, her voice sore from hours of reading, she seemed bewildered. Trying to weigh all the terrible things they’ve heard Deadpool has done and the image of that same man fathering a child.

            “And his alpha bloodmate, Vanessa.”

            “He brought his pack?” Michelle paled.

            “A portion of them. Yes.”

            “Here?”

            “Yes.”

            “Oooooo, babies!” MJ lit up, and turned on her imploring eyes on the others, “Please please please please?”

            Michelle sunk deep into the couch, drawing her knees up and wrapping her arms around them. Gwen didn’t look all that convinced either, but Michelle looked actually betrayed for a second when Gwen gestured for Peter to open the door. Peter took a breath and moved to the coffee table instead. He sat on the edge, and took Michelle’s hand in his, “You get last say.” She needed it more than Peter. If she was ever going to feel comfortable, at least some of this had to be her choice. It was Peter’s life, but Peter was her family, her responsibility as much as she was his. They were separate, but they were crucial.

            Her dark eyes swooped his face, reading him. She did it best after all. Saw what others couldn’t.

            “I think I can give him a chance if you can,” she whispered, rubbing her cheek a little tellingly. “I hate you, by the way.”

            Peter smirked, “I know.”

            Wade and Vanessa turned to the door as Peter opened it, their hushed conversation cutting short. “I told you,” Vanessa murmured before walked passed Wade to wrap Peter in a hug, “I knew I’d see you again. Wade doesn’t make hearts in his eyes for anyone less than the best.” Her scent was light and sweet, laced forever with Wade’s scent.

            Unlike the last time they’d interacted, Peter didn’t need to be defensive, he could blush and smile and not feel like he shouldn’t, though he did meet Wade’s eyes to maintain that feeling. The alpha was bringing them together, not pitting them against each other.

            Peter moved the three guests inside, and he nearly felt the moment Wade and his alpha bondmate realized Peter’s pack was all omegas. His hand went to the karambit tucked at his back as Vanessa and Wade’s scents woke up with surprise.

            Michelle rose to her feet, stepping in front of Gwen and MJ, her eyes like knives.

            Vanessa took a step back and turned to Wade, “ _Jesus_ _Christ_ , Wade. You are so much more trouble then you’re worth,” she shook her head with affection.

            Wade turned to Peter, pale as a ghost. “ _All_ of you are….” He bit his tongue and shifted the waking girl in his arms as she responded to the shift in her parent’s scents. “Hey Ellie-belly,” he kissed at the top of her head, “We’re here, say hello to Petey-pie.”

            Her head shot up and Peter got the full attention of two startingly blue eyes and a milliwatt smile that could have lit whole countries. But she flipped on a dime, blushing and hiding her face in her dad’s shirt. “Daddy, you didn’t tell me he was so pretty,” she complained, making Wade laugh out loud.

            Wade blushed almost as hard as Peter, but the alpha managed to smile like an idiot despite it, “No, I distinctly remember calling him the prettiest boy on earth, didn’t I, Vee?”

            “Sure did, Red,” Vanessa laughed, seeming to relax a bit at Wade being a flirt. She turned back to the girls and moved over to talk to them as Peter’s attention was stolen by the little girl peeking over at him under her father’s chin.

            He wasn’t quite sure what to do with his hands, but he figured keeping one on his knife wasn’t the most polite, so he crossed his arms over his chest instead. The lesser of two evils.

            “Can I put you down now?” Wade asked kinda desperately and the little girl pouted even as he father set her little feet on the ground, but once she was free, she blushed at Peter and ran straight to MJ, like the omega had a freaking child-oriented homing beacon strapped to her chest.

            And then it was just Peter and Wade left in the foyer.

            “Sooo,” Wade said leaning on the round table in the middle of the room. “This is what you look like in clothes.” Peter blushed. “I mean I saw you in some before you left at the beginning of winter, but from what I can tell, all spring you’ve decided to live the nudist lifestyle. I’m not shaming, I can dig it, but its just a surprise on a guy, ya know? Let an alpha be warned before you drop such a delicious bombshell as your skin out for the whole world to see.”

            Peter wasn’t quite sure what to say except, “No, I don’t think I will.” Wade smirked and dropped his eyes to Peter’s hand on the table, “The point is there isn’t a warning,” Peter said softly. “You’re supposed to be shocked.”

            Wade smiled at his feet, “Am I?”

            Peter stepped closer, “Aren’t you?”

            Wade’s eyes rose to his and Peter felt that same sense of anticipation as before, like he was supposed to wait for something like this to happen. Just Wade’s smell was enough to make Peter’s body come alive. He wanted to encroach on the sense of danger he saw hiding under the surface, in a way he’d never thought he could want.

            Peter’s spent most of his life learning to edge beside danger. He doesn’t know how he ever thought he would fall in love with anything less.

            That thought sorta takes his breath away.

 _Love_.

            God, it isn’t that is it?

            He reaches for Wade’s hand, twines their fingers.

            Peter’s can’t remember being so scared and so excited.

            Wade brushes his fingers over Peter’s cheek and he nearly purrs into it. He grabs Wade’s wrist and opens his eyes up at the man, “Why me? Why do you want me?”

            Wade looked perplexed for a while, but then his face smoothed and his voice came out rough, “Because you walked into the lion’s den and you weren’t afraid. I was- _I am_ the kind of thing people run away from. I’m not always a good man. I met Vee before I got all scared up, met Shiklah when I was busy being the worst human on earth and she resents me for not wanting to be that man anymore since Ellie was born.”

            “But I met you when something like me and something like you are worse enemies and you didn’t make me feel like I was a monster, wasn’t good enough. You held up your chin and you were brave, and you were kind. It’s really hard to be both those things, but you were.”

            Peter swallowed, it was a lot to take in. He wasn’t sure where to start, so he stepped against Wade. Ducked his nose under Wade’ jaw and pressed a soft kiss there as Wade wrapped him in his arms. He felt safe there. Safe with his alpha there to hold him again. Safe with the man who cared for Peter because he was brave, because he was kind. Peter could hardly ever call himself those things. He wasn’t sure the words applied.

            He was so many things but kind? Brave?

            But there weren’t lies in his scent, or in his eyes. Wade was looking down with complete certainty, with care, affection. Peter didn’t understand. How could someone think those things about him? He didn’t- didn’t deserve it. He was a coward. He was always afraid. always scared.

            Peter was hardly nice either. Not mean is not nice. And even then, he _had_ been mean to Wade, had threatened him multiple times with a knife, had even cut the alpha…

            There wasn’t a scab on the alpha’s neck.

            There should have been. Peter drew blood.

            Sensing Peter’s confusing and following his line of sight, Wade chuckled. “I guess now it the part of the story where I tell you I have accelerated healing.”

            “Accelerated? Like a mutant?” Peter asked surprised.

            “Exactly like.”

            “Oh,” Peter turned his eyes to Wade’s scars. There was a lot of them. Lots looked life threatening, even life ending.  He thought of the scar he’d found over Wade’s heart, like the man had been stabbed in the chest. “How accelerated?

            “Back from death in a few hours, cuts and bruises in minutes or seconds depending on severity.”

            “Oh,” and then Peter shuttered, “Oh no.”

            Wade pulled Peter back to his chest, “No freaking out, Babyboy. I’m fine, perfectly fine.”

            Peter nosed against his scent glands. ‘Back from death in a few hours.’ He said it so cavalier.

            Trying not freak everyone out, Peter took a deep breath and settled his scent, keeping it soft. He pulled away and sent Wade a bracing smile, the alpha cupped his cheek and kissed the tip of Peter’s nose. Peter blushed and dipped his face to the floor at the sweet feeling that swarmed his chest. “You’re a bad person,” blushed at Wade, who just smiled like he couldn’t get enough.

            Peter stepped away from the alpha and into the living room where Peter’s pack had kept an on him, Michelle was looking at him like she though Peter was a sap.

            He sat beside her so he could elbow her.

            Wade took a moment in the foyer before he walked into the living room. He wasn’t wearing his mask or a hood to hide his face, and the set of his shoulders and the turn of his face showed he wasn’t all that comfortable about it. He hadn’t been shy to Peter, but it showed when the girls looked up at him.

            Peter couldn’t read their faces, but it must have surprised Wade because he blushed and turned to where Vanessa was lounging in an arm chair, pleasantly watching Wade’s reaction. She reached out and grabbed his hand bracingly. Wade turned his eyes on Peter and smiled.

            So, the girls hadn’t been terrible.

            Gwen and MJ kept up a steady conversation with Vanessa and Wade, but Michelle was quiet. Peter wasn’t surprised by it.

            She got even more stiff and uncomfortable when Ellie turned her attention on her. She asked Michelle about her watch, a piece of technology most people didn’t have anymore, but she liked to tinker and had gotten it working again.

            Michelle started talking really technical, but the girl didn’t seem to mind, just kept asking questions about words she didn’t know and then started asking more complicated questions when she gathered enough back ground info. She was smart. Really smart. And Michelle warmed up like a lizard in the sun, even if she was still distrustful of Wade and Vanessa.

 

 

 

 

 

            Peter couldn’t tell you how it happened, but Wade, Vanessa and Ellie ended up staying all night. They pretty much fell asleep all over the room. Wade was on the floor beside Peter who was tucked under the girls’ feet. Ellie was asleep on her mom’s chest, who was sprawled in the armchair she’d taken up for most of the night.

            It was Bucky who woke Peter up in the late morning while everyone else was asleep. His hand was tangled in Wade’s finger and the girls were using him as a foot stool, and Bucky tripped over one of Wade’s boots that Ellie had stolen last night.

            Peter pulled himself free to go help the man up.

            “Sorry,” Peter held his hand as Bucky stood, then kicked the shoes out of the foyer and into the living room.

            “I can’t really blame you for this, you got a full house,” Bucky grumbled he waved for Peter to follow as he walked into the dinning room. “How’d you get Wade and the pack in the same room?”

            “I honestly have no idea,” Peter admitted as he scrubbed a hand through his messy hair. “Wade showed up pretty late last night and things just,” he shrugged, “happened.”

            Bucky picked up an apple from the fruit basket and sat on the edge of the table, “You smell happy.”

            Peter blushed, “I _might_ be.”

            “God forbid,” Bucky rolled his eyes.

            “It feels like he does sometimes,” Peter admits propping himself against the back of a chair.

            “I guess, I understand,” Bucky blew a stray hair from his face, “I mean life has felt like weirdly unfortunate lately. I mean what did Steve do to Norman Osborn to deserve a hit out on him? From what I can tell? Nothing, and we’ve been looking.”

            Peter went cold, blinking back shock, as he squeaked.

            “What?” Bucky scrunched his nose at Peter.

            Peter cleared his throat as his mind began to short circuit, “I- I- Did you say Norman Osborn?”

            Bucky narrowed his eyes, “Yeah. Why?”

            “He’s alive!?” Peter wanted to peel his skin off at the look of confusion on Bucky’s stupid face. “He’s- He’s dead! _Isn’t he?_ ” Peter felt woozy, dizzy on his feet.

            Bucky’s scent went furious, “You’re the reason he put out a hit on Steve, aren’t you? Peter, what did you do?!”

            Peter spun on his heel and walked out of the dining room. His brain felt like it had gone off line. He couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t breathe.

            “Peter!” Bucky yelled following him.

            He tripped over Wade’s boots in the living room and he hit the floor with tears in his eyes.

            Fuck.

            Fuckidy fuck fuck.

            FUCK!

            Peter curled against his balled fists and held back a gut-wrenching scream, but then he started hyperventilating.

            Someone touched Peter’s shoulder and they smelled so safe. Peter couldn’t think! He crawled into their arms. Broad hands spread over his back and at the base of his neck. Alpha. _My alpha_.

            The furious smell touched Peter and he turned in his alpha’s arms, launched himself at the hulking figure, snarling. Nononono, repeat and repeat in Peter’s head. No. Norman couldn’t be alive. No. NO. NO!

            “Peter!” multiple voices yelled in unison as Peter pulled his knife.

            Someone grabbed Peter’s wrist, someone else was pulling around his waist, yanking him off the snarling beast clawing at Peter’s arm.

            “What did you do?!” “Peter, stop!” “What the fuck is going on!?” “Peter!” “Peter, stop growling!”

            Peter was wrapped in more than one set of arms, lost in the cloud of different safe scents. He could detect his pack. His alpha. They were surrounding him, and he felt the fight or flight slowly settle into something weaker. His head was tucked under his alpha’s chin, but Michelle was curled against his back and Gwen was draped over them and MJ was brushing her fingers in his hair. They all smelled desperate, but safe. Like he belonged to them. Like he needed to stop fighting, so he did.

            The girls stopped holding him so tight, but they stayed close as he relaxed in Wade’s arms, his alpha sweet and warm as Peter’s breathing tried to match his, and Peter’s heart attempted to match the careful rhythm of his alpha’s.

            When Peter blinked his eyes open, Steve was holding Bucky, the alpha scenting something safe for his omega, but Bucky didn’t look soothed in the slightest. He was frowning severely at Peter, a death threat in his eyes.

            Vanessa and Ellie were by the door, with wide eyes.

            Steve tried to keep the peace. “Jesus Christ, what happened?”

            Bucky snarled, “I was just talking to him about Osborn’s hit on-“ The girls flinched and Bucky’s mouth snapped shut.

            Michelle rubbed as soothing line down Peter’s back as he close his eyes against her voice, “Norman Osborn is alive?”

            Peter shivered against Wade. Dear god have mercy.

            Steve’s voice was calm, “He’s been in hiding for a few years, but yeah.”

            Peter startles them all by wrenching himself out of Wade’s arms and standing.

            He walks over to his trunk, Michelle following on his heels. “Peter.”

            He wrenches it open and starts throwing everything out onto the floor. MJ whimpers. “Peter.”

            Jewelry clinks and chimes as it smashes to the floor as he tosses it aside, the case busting open and spilling all its contents across the room. “Peter!”

            He uses his finger nails to pry the false bottom out of his truck and grabs his chest harness. “Peter, stop!” Michelle grabs his arm and he nearly snarls at her.

            “He’s supposed to be dead. I fucking killed him. He’s dead. He was – I was –“

            Horror. It tasted sour on his tongue.  

            It’s a story every omega has. Someone was mean. “He hurt me.” and they got away, or they didn’t have a story anymore. Peter had gotten away. “And he isn’t dead.” Others before him hadn’t been so lucky. Crushed in his teeth like they didn’t matter to anyone, stuck under his thumb because they couldn’t run away.

            “What ever you think you have to do, you don’t. We can figure this out together-“

            Things were already being lain in his mind. This was one of the few times he knew he would do nothing less of refusing to walk away. No matter how, this story had to end. And he only knew it had to end in blood.

            Peter snatches his hand back and snarls at her, “If you try to follow me Michelle,” His scent when furious and dark, putting even Bucky’s scent to shame with the amount of pure rage in it.

            Vanessa and Ellie opened the door and vanished outside it.

            “You’re not going alone,” Michelle hissed, her scent following him with anger.

            Peter whimpered and wiped a hand down his face, “You can’t follow, Michelle. _You can’t._ If he got his hands on you… I’d never forgive myself. He’s a _monster_. Pure evil. But he’s mine to deal with. I thought he was dead, but I didn’t stay to make sure. Who knows how many of them are gone now because I didn’t make sure…”

            “You don’t have to do this alone,” Michelle whispered.

            “He won’t,” Steve said holding tight to Bucky’s hand. “We have a few things to finish up here, but after that, we can come too.”

            “No,” Peter said simply. “I can finish this myself. I know you only got roped into this because of me.” he turned back to his, “I have to be the one who ends this.”

            Wade surprised Peter by laughing one dry noise. When he looked over to where the man was sat on the ground with his half knees up as he leans forward on them, Wade sent him a smirk and held out the karambit handle first to Peter, “Being the unstable one is my shtick Babyboy.”

            Peter took the knife and wrinkled his nose, “Yeah, well. Get over it.”

            Wade chuckled and let his chin rise submissively at Peter, “You’re not going alone.” It would have been an arrogant statement if Wade hadn’t been submitting to Peter in such a tender fashion. It was so trusting to expose his throat like that, something only omegas did for their alphas. It was meant to make an alpha feel in charge.

            “God dammit, Wade,” Peter grumbled even as he felt himself caving. “Fine.”

            Wade rolled to his feet and leaned down to kiss Peter fiercely on the lips. “Thanks Babyboy. Let me go get my shit and we can leave in a few hours.” Then Wade was leaving, walking passed everyone else and slipping into the hall.

 

 

           

 

 

            Peter was wrapped in hidden knives when Wade walked into the hotel room in full Deadpool gear with Ellie sitting happy on his hip. It was a strange juxtaposition. The sweet little girl in the arms of a very dangerous looking man. His mask was pulled up over his nose to expose his mouth and he was nuzzling kisses against her cheek and head as she giggled.

            “Are you gonna be good for Vee? Or am I gonna have to come back and kick your little butt?” the man was kissing into her hair. Vanessa slipped into the room behind them.

            “I’ll be good!” the girl giggled. “You just gotta promise to come home in less than two pieces.”

            Wade wrinkled his nose, “But that’s no fuuuun.” Wade complained loudly, Ellie giggling again.

            Peter smiled as he started finding weapons for Michelle. She and the other girls had guilted him into letting her come along too as long she didn’t actually enter Norman’s household. Michelle said he needed as many eyes as he could get, and next to Gwen, she was the next best doctor they had and they all figured he’d need one

            Peter figured if nothing else, she would be close enough for him to protect while they were moving.

            To a certain extent, Peter could see that Bucky had forgiven him, but he was wary now as he looked at Peter, like he’d never been before. He didn’t even fuss at him like he normally would, like he was doing to the girls.

            Trust. It had been broken.

            Peter bit his lip. It was bound to happen sooner or later. Peter ruined everything he touched.

            “You smell like you’re mourning,” Michelle informed him in a whisper and Peter closed his eyes and eased his scent, there was no point in making everyone uncomfortable.

            The girls, Bucky and Steve all said goodbye as Peter shoved spare clothes and supplies into his and Michelle’s backpacks. Steve promising to keep their stuff with him and move it back with his things when the festival was over.

When Peter finally threw his own bag into his shoulders, Steve crushed Peter in a hug, but Bucky just murmured, “Don’t die,” and walked away.

            Peter didn’t blame him. He lowered his head.

 

 

 

 

            Wade lead them out of Stark’s huge homestead to two horses that Peter consciously choose not to question, especially when each horse was branded by a different household. They had a very long journey ahead of them, Peter would rather not walk.

            Stark’s household was as far west as one could get before they started wading out to sea, and Norman had secluded himself in a new household on the eastern coast that wasn’t quite as northerly as Peter’s pack’s hideaway, but it wasn’t going to be a fun trip, they’d have to make sure to restock supplies during the ride.

            They rode bareback as not have to buy or steal gear over than bridals, much to Michelle’s dismay, but they were all well versed in horse riding and bare back would be exhausting but not impossible.

            They rode hard the first day. Running the horses for long periods then walking them to let them rest. But when night fell, Peter was physically tired, but he couldn’t sleep. Michelle was out like a light, snoring lightly as Peter circled their temporary camp. Wade looked uncomfortable, kept watching Peter make the rounds.

            Peter knew what he looked like: a caged animal. Edging the walls of its enclosure, looking for a weak point. It wasn’t the first time he’d felt caged. It came and went from time to time. Made him venture out of the cave to break into other people’s homes.

            Maybe that’s what happens when you cage something, and it breaks out. It finds other things to trap itself in and fight its way back out.

            Wade falls asleep eventually and Peter keeps watch all night, kicking the others up when the sun breaks the horizon, shattering the light. Peter turns to it expectantly.

            They ride slower that day, and despite Michelle’s complaining, Peter hops off the horse to walk beside it, needing to work off his nervous energy.

            That night when they’re all sitting around the fire, Peter stares up at the sky contemplating the world’s ending.

            He read once that sky used to be too polluted with light to see the stars, but now Peter can see them all. There are only a few places that make enough power for things like streetlights to block them out.

            Peter had come to learn that if you ever look up at night, and you can’t see the stars, you are either inside, under a tree, or in the radiation zone. For most people, if you made it through a day long enough to find the sky at the end of the day was too cloudy to see stars, then you were as good as gone anyway.

            Peter looked down as his hands. Wondered how he made it here. There were a lot of reasons why he shouldn’t be. The least of which was Norman Osborn and yet he was still one of the only things that made Peter so terrified he’d attack someone he cared about.

            Norman was Peter’s boogeyman. The thing that lurked in his shadows and kept him up at night. Long teeth and evil hands. Hazel eyes that glowed in Peter’s nightmares. Sometimes Peter could still feel Norman’s hands on his body, his teeth in Peter’s shoulder.

            He used to bite Peter every day saying that Peter would give in, the scar would form or Norman would just keep biting until Peter died. He wouldn’t have been the first. And now he knew he wasn’t the last.

            It was almost too much. Peter had moved on. He still looked over his shoulder, he still stepped lightly, but in his own way he had accepted that he didn’t need to be afraid- at least not of Norman. But that relief hadn’t been real.

            Peter couldn’t eat when Michelle attempted to hand over something she’d concocted in a pot. He waved her away and she frowned, “Peter, you haven’t eaten in two days.”

            He didn’t say anything, just rose and walked away, went to check on the horses. He could hear Michelle and Wade talking about him so after he was done with the horses, he walked further and further until their voices drown out and he was alone.

            The moon was out as he stepped into a clearing.

            It sparkled against the gathered moisture on the tall spring grass. And as he ran his eyes over it, it almost looked like the stars. Like they were playing pretend, shining and glinting at Peter, swaying in the breeze. Shooting stars all around as he waded through them. Shooting stars against his palms. Little wishes on his skin.

            It seemed wrong to make a wish with the stars so close. When he was the one swiping them from their sky.

            What would he wish for anyway? Norman’s head on a pike? That wasn’t what wishes were for. Wishes were bright things, things that made people smile.

            Wishes were for people to which smiling came easier.

            Maybe he’d stuff these falling stars in his pocket, save them for someone sweeter.

            “Woah.”

            Peter lifted his head to find Wade at the edge of the clearing, his eyes staring straight into Peter, adoration and interest vying for control of the alpha’s face.

            It felt strange to bloom under such an intense stare, to not want to wilt and hide when Peter wasn’t wearing a mask, when Peter was only dressed up as himself. When he was dirty and tired, and stunk like dried sweat and horse.

            It was strange to look at Wade and not feel inadequate, but then Wade had never try to make Peter feel that way. No, the way he looked at him made Peter feel seen, like Wade could see under all the layers of protection Peter tried to build between himself and the world. He could strip them away faster and better than Michelle. When Peter should feel violated and vulnerable, when there was essentially nothing between Peter and Wade, Peter could only feel this electric thing that grew and grew in the darkness stretched between them. Unseen even as it swallowed Peter whole.

            Peter scrubbed a hand through his hair and turned his eyes up to the sky as Wade stepped into the clearing until Wade was stood beside him.

            This feeling was building in his chest…he felt insignificant compared to it.

            The alpha didn’t pester him, didn’t say a single damn thing, and Peter could feel the tension between them rise higher and higher the longer Peter refused to look over to Wade.

            He tried to fight the pull to lower his eyes but lost. And it was the single best failure of Peter’s life, because Wade looked…

            Invincible. He looked a hundred feet tall, and Peter loved every second of it. The alpha was calm and steady and powerful beside Peter. Strong not because he overpowered someone else but because Peter hadn’t even touched him, and he looked like he was holding back a universe’s implosion to keep himself from touching Peter himself. Like he wanted nothing more than to lay his hands on Peter, but he didn’t want to shatter him. Like he could have done so with just a graze of his finger.

            Peter wasn’t so sure he couldn’t. He felt paper thin. Hardly even a man strong enough to hold on to his own tattered soul.

            His eyes softly closed, Peter rose to the tip of his toes, using a hand to steady himself on Wade’s chest and pressed a butterfly’s wing light of a kiss on the softest lips he’d ever felt.

            And if it didn’t feel like a promise…

            If it didn’t feel like Peter was laying himself more naked than he’d ever been with another human being…

            Dropping back to his heels, Peter was breathing like he’d run a marathon. Wade swallowed hard.

            Peter knew that there was a plan somewhere. That he was going somewhere far away to do away with a man he’d thought was already dead.

            No matter what, death was chasing him down.

            Yet, life had found him, just for a moment. As long as his eyes were closed

            It was right here, beating against Peter’s palm, beating in Wade’s chest.

            Opening his eyes, Peter was mute at the darkness glinting in Wade’s dilated pupils and the fierce set of the man’s jaw.

            If Peter was a tissue paper man, Wade was a battering ram.

            Peter balled his fist in the alpha’s shirt, and Wade rose a hand to cup Peter’s jaw. Then Wade’s scent was right in Peter’s face and it curled inside Peter’s lungs like a cat finding its bed, kneading deep and purring like all was right in the world.

            He rose to his toes, his kiss met with a soft breath against his cheek, like Peter had single-handedly knocked the breath from the alpha.

            The alpha kissed like Peter was a holy wafer against his tongue, like Peter was the holy script, and he followed, or he died on the alter.

            The kiss turned deep, Peter wrapped his arms over the alpha’s shoulders, yet Wade held him close like Peter would step away, but Peter couldn’t imagine it. Couldn’t imagine ever not wanting Wade. He was only alive when Wade as there, when Wade was touching him, when he was kissing him.

            They only pulled away to breath, and Wade rolled his forehead against Peter’s as they panted. He slid his hands up Peter’s back to lace his fingers in Peter’s hair as he stroked his thumbs against Peter’s cheek bones. Peter had hardly before ever felt so cherished. 

            “How?’ Wade whispered against his lips, his eyes closed carefully and mouth hot. “How can you- I’m not- Why?”

            Peter could have asked the same thing. Why does he get to have Wade? How did he deserve it?

            Instead, Peter kissed him, slow and soft and sweet and lasting. If he ended up not being able to keep Wade, he wanted to have him now. He wanted to live a dream where Wade was just his… just for a while.

            Wade kissed back like he’d followed Peter’s thoughts and felt them deep and dark between them, and all he had to do to chase them away was make time stop. And as if Wade were a god, he made it so.

            He settled time around them.

            Froze stars in their descent from heaven.

            Stopped the wind like a held breath.

            He chased back the night and Peter was lost in his touch, in the flow of hands under his shirt. In the curled of fingers between Peter’s ribs. The warmth on Wade’s skin under the hem of clothing.

            For the love of god and man, he alone stopped time.

            Peter dug his boots in to the soft soil and pushed his alpha back, falling onto into the long grass to land in Wade’s waiting lap.

            The grass swooped overhead, taller now than Peter as he sit pretty for his alpha. Leaning down to kiss the alpha again, his fingers gently untying the alpha’s pants.

            Wade was so gentle as he kissed under Peter’s chin, as he grazed his teeth against Peter’s soft skin. His hands are soft and careful, and his mouth is even more so.

Peter can do little but purr against it.

            The larger man rolls them, kneeling over Peter and he doesn’t feel trapped. He feels safe for the first time in days. Like burning suns could hurdle down from above and his alpha would only have to raise his eyes to banish them back. Hell, he already has.

            He moans something jumbled as his alpha unties both pairs of their pants, slides them down shaking legs, revealing knives in their sheaths strapped to Peter’s pale thighs and the alpha growls greedily as he mouths against the dark, tight leather. Peter is speechless at his alpha’s obvious arousal at Peter being armed.

            Peter grabs one of his alpha’s wrists and the alpha growls, his eyes grow darker than any shadow as Peter sucks at the tender flesh there.

            Wade nearly collapses on top of Peter, his legs shaking heavily. Pressing promising, gentle kisses against the inside of Peter’s thighs. It’s just one more thing that Wade does to prove how much he cares for Peter, these light feather soft things that Peter wants to live the rest of his life surrounded by.

            When his alpha slides his spit slick fingers inside of him Peter arches into his hand, half a cry gathering in his throat when the alpha licks a stripe up his length.

            Peter’s eyes catch on the stars up above.

            Sparkling, sparkling. Wavering in and out of the dark.

            A single star slips from its blade to drop across Peter’s cheek.

            And its wish is soaked into Peter’s skin. Deeper and deeper.

            Wade presses a kiss against its trail.

            A slow kiss. A stolen wish. Taking his breath away.  Whispering, whispering little promises wordlessly against each other’s skin. A litany of _mine_ and _mine_ and _mine_.

            Wade presses into Peter and it burns. It unravels in Peter’s chest like a bird spreading its wings. Feathers soft at his sides in the shape of Wade’s fingers. Claws stuck in Peter’s heart darker than the blue of Wade’s eyes.

            Don’t let go. Protect me. Hold. Hold me.

            Tight hands, pressing sweet kisses, rolling deep as he can go. Oh. Don’t let go.

            Wade tangles their fingers together and Peter whimpers into his mouth. Please god don’t stop.

            Peter rolls them as he leans back as he slowly stokes himself as he pushed himself up and down in his alpha’s lap. One of Wade’s hands latch onto Peter’s thigh, the other knocks Peter’s hand away to stroke the omega himself, and the filthy encouragement from the alpha’s mouth has Peter panting and coming hard for his alpha. Across the man’s bared stomach where the shirt has gotten rucked up.

            Wade comes with a shuttered breath a few seconds later. And time moves backward like a trick. All shimmering and shaking.

            They came down to together, with Wade not pulling out even as he went soft inside of Peter. The omega burying his nose against his alpha’s chest as he twined their fingers.

            They both purred for a long time, just breathing as they settled.

            It took a lot of internal debate before Peter finally rolled off his alpha to find his pants.

            He found a sweat rag in one his pockets and was about to wipe himself down as best he could, but Wade pushed him onto his back and started licking him up before he could try.

            First swiping his tongue over Peter’s length efficiently then he sucked bruises into Peter’s stomach.

            “Oh god,” Peter gasped when the alpha pinned his knees to his chest and licked his come slick hole. “Wade. _Oh god_.”

            All the time they’d spent coming down was ruined as Peter started mewling for his alpha who wasn’t being in the slightest bit clinical but was purring and growling and kneading Peter’s thighs as he slicked his tongue over and in Peter.

            “Jesus Christ,” Peter was reeling as his alpha nipped and sucked on his rim, and then it was just, “ _Alphaalphaalpha_. My alpha. _Mineminemine. My alpha._ ”

            A chorus of attention and devotion building because Wade wanted to please Peter, to push Peter farther, and Peter came again with Wade’s fingers between his legs and his mouth around Peter’s cock.

            It was only then that the alpha moved away enough for Peter to pull up his pants and assemble himself in some sort of order, even if Wade was a little shit the whole time, biting Peter’s ankles and knees, running his hands up Peter’s shirt as he sucked marks in Peter’s thighs. Peter hadn’t laughed so hard in a long time.

            Peter does end up using his sweat rag to clean Wade’s stomach though. And the man has to peel off his shirts to remove the inner one because cum hadn’t been cleaned from the man’s skin before he rolled his shirt down earlier, like the heathen he was. But to be fair he had done it so Peter could cuddle against his chest without making a mess.

            “Maybe next time we should think about actually getting naked,” Peter smirks when Wade studies the shape of the stain on his shirt, but the man turns his big blue eyes on Peter.

            “But then someone might see us. They might think they have to save you from the vicious best that is my body.”

            Peter blinks, thrown but the self-deprecation joke. Wade goes back to putting on his shirts like it isn’t a big deal.

            Honestly, Peter went a little blind to the scars at some point. When he looked at Wade, he didn’t see someone who looked injured or like a monster or something anything less than someone who Peter was learning to care about.

            “Maybe we should keep the weapon holsters on, though,” Wade said to himself with a twinkle in his eye, “I didn’t even know I had that kink, but _lord have mercy_ the sight of that leather on our skin, Babyboy.” He nearly mauled a kiss against Peter’s throat. The scrape of teeth almost enough to have Peter’s body responding again, but he was too exhausted.

            “How do you have the energy?” Peter grumbled pressing soft, sweet kisses under his alpha’s chin to wind him down.

            “Only one of us been up for two days and got a double feature, Babyboy,” he purred when Peter ducked his head to the side and Peter pressed a kiss to his scent gland, nuzzling the sweetness into his nose.

            “Is this you asking for reciprocation?” Peter mouthed in the alpha’s skin, and he could feel Wade’s heartbeat changing with the promise of it.

            “No,” Wade admitted, “You don’t have to do damn thing you don’t want to, Petey-pie.”

            “So, if I just walked away…?”

            Wade met his mouth with hunger, whispering when Peter moved on to kissing under the alpha’s jaw again. “You can say no whenever you want.”

            Peter surprised them both by biting almost hard enough to break the skin.

            Wade looked so confused when Peter pulled away muttering, “Shit, I’m sorry.” And extracted himself from the alpha’s arms.

            He held his hand out to help the alpha up, but Wade hesitated to hold his fingers to the bite. Peter knew he hadn’t broken the skin, but honestly, Peter didn’t want to think about _why_ he had almost not shown restraint.

            There was a lot of subconscious psychology behind it.

            Peter hadn’t exactly been raised by anything less than a snake named Loki and parents who’d handed him over at fourteen to a monster without a second thought. Norman himself wasn’t exactly a pulpit for good mental health, and Peter had just a second of anger he’d almost bitten into Wade’s neck.

            Peter knew there were decent people out in this shithole of a world where ‘No’ only sometimes means no if your omega. And the fact that Peter trusted that Wade really meant it, put him on edge again. Reminded him that there was a period of his life that saying no meant something else.

            When Wade looked back up at him, Peter lowered his head apologetically, “I really am sorry. I just… I’m not the best person to ever exist.”

            Wade stood under his own power and took Peter’s hand afterward, “It’s fine Petey-pie. I’m sure I deserved it.”

            Peter wrinkled his nose, but let Wade lead him back toward camp. They were almost there when Peter whispers, “You didn’t deserve it.” and guilt floods because Wade either doesn’t hear or doesn’t respond, and Peter should have said that truth earlier instead of hesitating.

 

 

 

           

 

            Peter was cradled between Wade’s legs and against his chest. He’d had another long night of not sleeping. At least he hadn’t paced that night, but when Peter had been riding with Michelle, he’d found himself listing on the horse, dozing off against her back. Wade had come by and tugged Peter unto his horse to the symphony of Michelle’s complaints.

            “-comes back smelling like a used rag – stinks up the place- won’t sleep unless it is literally _on top of me_ – dragging me off my own god damn horse – can’t get no peace-“

            Peter falls asleep to the beating of Wade’s heartbeat.

            The soft lulling sound carries through to Peter’s dreams of darkness, blanketing everything in an undeniable feeling of safeness.

            When he wakes hours later, the morning has changed to late afternoon, and Peter can smell fresh sunscreen on himself, meaning Wade must has just applied in on him without waking Peter which should be considered a miracle with how tense he’s been the last few days.

            The alpha’s hand is on his stomach, holding Peter firmly but gently to Wade’s chest to keep Peter on the horse. Though the placement of is hand is most likely unconscious and not meant to be telling, Peter feels something shiver with unease at the softness of the gesture, the instinctual drive to impregnate mixed with something so unerringly Wade gentle.

            It took a moment, but Michelle’s laugh broke through his brooding, Wade’s laughter low and carding through Peter’s hair as the alpha ducked his head against Peter’s scalp, but continued on with his story, making Michelle laugh and Peter smile. Michelle must have been very bored or at least warming up to Wade, if she was granting the alpha enough attention to laugh at his stories.

            “Your alpha is ridiculous,” Michelle tosses over her shoulder as Wade’s story ends and she stops laughing, “I can’t believe you can stand it.”

            Peter grumbles, “I’m sitting.” And Michelle smirks.

            “Very comfortably, I see.”

            “I make a very sturdy mattress,” Wade chirps.

            “He’s not my alpha,” Peter also grumbles though he turns his head slightly to press a kiss under Wade’s jaw, who’s eyes are softly affectionate despite Peter’s grumbling.

            Michelle doesn’t look back, but he can see her thinking by the set of her shoulders. Though he can’t tell if that is a good thing or not.

            Peter leans back into the alpha’s broad chest, his eyes tracing out the shape of the landscape, a large lake stretching far and wide to their right and a miles and miles of flat, grassless earth until the hills overtake it in the distance. There isn’t any cover, but it was the shorter route.

            He pulls his tinted glasses and looks out over the water. A ripple displaced by a cool wind laps at the bank as they make their way passed.

            Peter has stared at the map long enough to know they are closer now to Norman than they are to Stark. Closer to hell than the rest of the world.

            Wade pulls the reins to keep the horse from wondering too close to the undrinkable water, so polluted that the land around it is barren for miles. From the surface the water looks calm and fresh, but under the gleaming ripples, well, death has probably tasted sweeter, or so Peter has heard.

            Peter tilts his hands back to nose under Wade’s jaw and appreciates the irony. Appreciates the sweat salted skin against his lips and the soft purr in his ear. The sway of the horse. The curl if the sun in his clothes. Wade’s wide hand against his chest.

            All of that peace floating on the surface, but dig an inch deeper, dive just a hair beneath what you can see? Darkness spills out like blood from a wound.

            Like nightmares into the day.

            Curses from the past.

            Michelle turns over her shoulder a stick of dried meat in her teeth, her eyes scanning the horizon behind them, “We have some clouds following us.”

            Peter and Wade look back as sure enough dark clouds are pushing at their horizon, flashes of light preceding a distant rumble that is far enough away Wade’s heartbeat had been able to cover it in Peter’s ear.

            “We should run the horses until it hits,” Peter suggests, “Get ourselves as close to cover as we can.”

            Wade hum in agreement and Peter shifts in his seat as Michelle bites of the chunk of meat in her mouth and hides the rest. Ignoring Wade when he jokes about her not supposed to use her teeth.

 

 

           

 

            “Not many guards,” Michelle observes.

            They’ve been just outside Norman’s household for just over twenty-four hours. Watching the rounds on the walls surrounding the homes and workshop buildings, and making assumptions about the fortification on the inside. Wade had wanted to wait longer but as night settled, Peter knew he couldn’t wait anymore.

            It was a moonless gloom and the torches around the perimeter still left dark places that they could slip through unseen

            “They got more we can’t see,” Wade sighs, “I’ve only ever been in once, but they had more than enough to make me think twice if I’d wanted to start something.”

            Peter retraced the memorized blueprints of the house Wade had drawn up in his mind. It wasn’t nearly complete enough for Peter’s liking, but he’d gone in blind to break ins before.

            They’d tied up their horses a few miles back. Michelle was supposed to go back and get them as soon as Peter and Wade went in. Not that she liked the plan.

            Peter dropped his outer jacket her shoulder and made sure to lace up his boots just a little tighter.

            Wade had already pulled on his mask and Peter brushed his hair from his forehead before pulling a wool hat over his head to keep stray hairs out of his way.

            “Start heading back,” Peter said over his shoulder.

            “Not until I can’t see you anymore,” Michelle argued, and Peter caved. Whatever, as long as she didn’t try to follow, not that Peter thought she could.

            “You ready?” Peter asked Wade and the man nodded solemnly. He’d been startlingly serious all day.

            As the only guard on this side of the perimeter wandered away, Peter sprinted out from the tree lining, Wade’s foot falls trailing close behind. They had a few hundred feet of open field to cross before the guard returned and if he did before they got there, cover was nowhere to be found.

            As they approached the wall, they slowed enough to make their footsteps silent. Once they were flush against the stone surface, they paused to catch their breath.

            Peter skimmed his fingers against the smooth stone. It had been sheared nearly flat to prevent climbing, but Peter was a much better climber than most. Wade copied his slide of fingers against the wall, looking at Peter with skeptical eyes.

            He couldn’t help his grin as he took a few steps back and jumped at the wall, his fingers catching on a razors edge of stone and the tips of his boots catching just enough friction so he could reach up and find another tiny irregularity in the stone and pulled himself just that much higher.

            Trying to move fast, Peter continued his climb, relying on finger and arm strength that couldn’t be sustained forever. He made it to the top in less than a minute and found himself alone when he peeked over the edge. The guard still not having returned.

            Peter hooked the rope he’d been carrying on his back and let the end tumble over the edge as he took in the little nook he’d secured himself in, half hidden by a few water barrels and small gathering of forgotten sand bags. Wade crawled up behind Peter and tugged up the rope, pushing it out of sight in case someone came back this way.

            Taking a deep breath, Peter closed his eyes and eased his scent, settling it under his skin to keep noses pointed somewhere else. An alpha scent such as Wade’s could be overlooked, an Omega scent not in found in the main household is a guaranteed red flag.

            Once he was calm, he opened his eyes and the dropped to the inside of the wall.

            He realized his mistake almost the second his feet hit the ground.

             The world shifting almost sideways as he heard a wall of men behind him pull their swords. 

            He turned on his heel and his hearing was proven true. "Oh fuck."

            Wade dropped down behind him.

            “I’m sorry,” Peter heard just behind him but before he could react beyond tensing, Wade grabbed him hard on his scent glands.

            Hard enough to have Peter gasping like he’d been punched in the stomach.

            In fact, Peter couldn’t see straight as Deadpool knocked his knees out from under him.

            Peter’s fingers were numb as they scrambled at his alpha’s hand. Hot tears forced out of his eyes and he screamed despite their precarious position. And then something hard hit him in the back of the head, and he stopped struggling.

            The world went dark, the pain swarming from every side took on a new edge. It wasn’t just physical pain anymore.

 

 

 

 

            Waking up on a stone floor, stripped nearly to nakedness, should probably start feeling routine at some point. This was Peter’s second consecutive household break-in that had led to it. But where Weasel had been in some vague comparison gentle, Peter felt bruises all up his arms and legs, like he'd been thrown down a set of stairs. He even spit up blood when he turned from his side to his stomach.

            Peter had been left in only a thin pair of pants that he’d worn as his last layer, and when he sat back on his heels hissing at the sparks of pain up his knees, he could see he was easily as bruised as he felt. Dark splotches decorating all visible skin.

            He wheezed a terrible breath before raising his eyes, and instantly Peter felt something seize and stutter in his chest.

            He’d been betrayed…

            Months and months ago Peter had taken the time to set all his feelings on a shelf deep inside himself and had resigned himself to never feeling them again. He’d set aside happiness and joy. He’d placed hope and love and longing so deep in the back the only one who’d ever be able to hurt him, was his own reflection. But the storm he had tried to hide them from, had knocked in the front door and came in swinging a sword bathed in red with dark blue eyes and a beautiful smile.

            Peter fell forward screaming his anger and betrayal into the floor, because all around Peter was a cell. Sure, it was dressed up. There was a dresser and a bed. There was a fire place and a set of high-backed chairs. There was a bookshelf ready to be filled, even had an ensuite bathroom. But there weren’t windows. There wasn’t any curtains or blankets on the bed, barely even a single pillow. There weren’t any books, no wood for the fire. The room smelt like someone had died in it and Peter’s fear smell was only just overpowering it.

            He could smell himself calling for Wade in his scent, but Peter could still feel the alpha’s grip devastatingly brutal on his neck, holding him down and hurting him until he screamed.

            Peter had trusted him. He had- he’d…

            If there was anything left inside him to shatter, Peter couldn’t feel it as he sobbed against stone. His whole body ached. It shook and shivered so deep down it reached his soul. Something freezing it out of him. Smoking it out with cold fingers and sharp nails.

            He was right where he started. A broken little omega. Naïve. Stupid. Blind to the truth life had placed in front of him: he wasn’t allowed to be happy.

            It was inescapable.

            Peter rose to his feet. MJ. Gwen. Michelle. He had to protect them. Wade betrayed him, who knew how far it extended, he had to protect the girls no matter what.

            Moving unseeingly to the metal door that locked only with a key, he wasn’t ready to see the man waiting for him in the antechamber.

            His stopped where he stood.

            “Peter Parker,” Norman spat with a smile that had Peter’s stomach rolling in horror. Norman stood from his sprawl in the arm chair. “Don’t I even get a ‘Hello alpha’? It’s been so long, you’d think Steve Rogers would have taught you better.”

            Peter’s eyes flicked to the door between him and freedom, he just had to get the key-

            “Ah-ah-ah.” Norman chastised and he crashed a wave of angry alpha at Peter and the bite on his shoulder nearly shuttered against his skin.

            Years.

            Peter had spent years away from Norman, but the bite didn’t care. It had faded with age, and only bid its time. On its first opportunity, it washed Peter in his alpha’s disappointment, and he stumbled like he’d been hit.

            “Now, now, Peter. Don’t cry, I missed you. Why don’t you want give me a kiss?” He laughed as Peter back stepped himself into a corner and whimpered.

            Norman’s eyes glowed an evil yellow and Peter felt helpless even as he snarled his teeth at the alpha who grabbed him hard on the cheeks and held Peter’s face away as he bit hard over Peter’s scent glands, sinking his sharp alpha canines until he was cutting his incisors into the flesh too.

            Peter fought like he’d been electrocuted. Wild and uncoordinated.

            Trying to pull away but only sunk Norman in deeper, tore his flesh and made the alpha cackle around his mouthful, like he planned to bite clean through.  

            The amused scent coming from the alpha had Peter screaming in agony as his body tried to soften under his alpha’s hands.

            Useless. Helpless.

            Norman pulled away and he smelled like Peter’s blood, smiled like he couldn’t get enough of the taste on his tongue. The blood sept from the wound on Peter’s neck, anticoagulants slow to stopper the bleeding when the bite hadn’t formed a new bond, when Peter’s body didn’t want the old one being forced on him again.

            Norman leaned his head against Peter as he tried to tuck himself away inside himself, “Tell me,” he said conversationally, licking his lips noisily, “Were you surprised when Wade turned on you? Did he tell you he’s been working for me for years? He was supposed you go kill your alpha for me but he brought you straight to me instead, the idiot."

            “I hear he was quite the little actor. Courted you to get close to you, did he succeed my little omega? Did you let that disgusting fuck stick his mutated dick inside you?” he laughed manically as Peter’s hurt scent, “Oh-ho, did you like it? Tell me the truth, little omega did you beg him for it?” he lathed his tongue over Peter’s open wound, his abrasive tongue like sandpaper on the tender flesh.

            But something about Norman's story didn't ring true. No one was a good enough actor to fool Peter for so long. 

            “Do you like scars little omega?" Norman hissed, "You left one pretty scar in my gut, here feel.” He grabbed Peter’s hand and shoved it up his shirt, forcing Peter’s fingers against a ragged scar.

            Peter gagged.

            His alpha forced his hand higher up his chest and around his throat. Peter’s hand flexed against his alpha’s Adam’s apple, against his carotid artery, but he couldn’t work enough strength into his grip to do anything.

            Useless.

            Evil eyes dug into Peter. “Doesn’t that feel good omega? To have your hand on me? Don’t you like it?”

            He pulled Peter’s hand away and wrapped his hand tight around Peter’s throat, pulling Peter away from the corner and toward the bed as Peter felt heavy tears drain from his eyes, and he tried to dig his feet into the stone, tried to claw and tear at the alpha’s hands but… but…

            Norman threw Peter on the bed and Peter tried to roll away, but Norman caught his ankle. He only managed to get his hand on the bed side table when Norman pulled him back.

            “Now, now. Play nice,” he giggled against the back of Peter’s neck.

            Something shiny caught the edge of Peter’s eye and he turned to head of the bed.

            There had been a single pillow on the bed, it was knocked eschew either by Norman throwing Peter on the bed or the omega’s nearly useless attempt at escape, but it had moved enough to show that it had been hiding something.

            A decorative, gold knife.

            It fit perfectly and familiarly in Peter’s hand.

            It was the knife Wade had traded Peter for.

            it had been left for him to find.

            Peter felt the man behind him tearing at his pants, drawing them down the back of his legs. He gripped the knife hard.

            It was a pretty knife. Meant to be displayed. Meant to be looked at and admired. But Peter had sharpened it passed a razors edge. He’d taken something meant to be benign and made it hurt.

            He laughed like he hadn’t laughed in a really long time, and as Norman froze with curiosity and confusion, Peter turned under his alpha, brought up his knife, and he didn’t even need all his strength as he sliced cleanly across the older man’s throat.

            The look on Norman’s face. Anger and confusion. The spray of Norman’s blood on Peter’s face. The absolute agony of his alpha’s dying as his body fought against the sweet, sweet relief.

            And even as his body shivered and shook with remorse, he lay beside the body of his alpha, glad to see the life gone for good from his eyes. He didn’t have to imagine it as he ran. He could see it gone. And now he’d never have to be afraid. He was free of this man forever.

 

 

 

 

 

 

            Sliding down the bed, parallel to Norman, Peter moved away. Grabbed his pants from the floor and replaced them as best he could since Norman had ripped the tie that secured them.

            Peter riffled through Norman’s pockets until he found the key.

            Something biting sat at the edge of his tongue, but Peter couldn’t speak, he was crying too hard.

            He backed out of the room to the antechamber. He shut the alpha away and locked the door with the key. And he leaned against it and sobbed himself hoarse. And when he finally had himself all cried out, he went to work putting himself in order.

            There wasn’t a lot he could salvage. There wasn’t much he wanted to keep from the wreckage anyway.

            He stood up as something carefully crafted. And his scent went from a little frightened thing to something that was _frightening_.

            There weren’t any guards in the hall and Peter walked passed each empty cell, pain  tried to slit his chest open because all he smelled in each room was a terrified omega, dead omega.

            Peter’s scent got angrier, perfumed stronger.

            He wasn’t even within twenty feet of the first guard his scent knocked out. They were around the corner and Peter couldn’t even see them, but he heard the crash of them on the floor. And as he passed, Peter hearing more bodies hit the floor.

            He climbed the stairs and found sunlight streaming through the curtains.

            He’d been knocked out for hours.

            He started a more thorough check of the rooms, he didn’t find anyone he knew. Didn’t find the girls here _Thank God_. He didn’t want to think that Wade would have handed over his pack too, but he hadn’t wanted to think Wade would have handed him over to a man that would have tortured Peter either. But how wrong he had been.

            He found a single live omega on his way out of the main house, their guards knocked out by Peter’s scent.

            The small, withered thing smelled like Norman. Was weak and dazed. No older than fifteen and the disfigured bite scar on his shoulder looked painful even now. Peter reached down and the omega could smell his alpha’s blood on Peter, and he started crying, but he reached up and wrapped his arms around Peter’s shoulders.

            Peter had to support most his weight, but there wasn’t much of it anyway. He still had a hand free for his knife.

            They searched most of the rest of the house for anyone else, but found no one.

            They stumbled out into the bright courtyard, shocked to find the cobblestones bathed in blood.

            The omega tucked in Peter’s side dropped to his knees as he started gagging.

            Dozens of guards were strewn about, and Peter’s scent wavered as his eyes spanned the wreckage of their bodies. Someone had sliced them to bits.

            “Babyboy.”

            Peter felt his heart flutter.

            He turned his eyes up to Wade as he dropped from a guard tower, landing with a roll across the courtyard. 

            The man was caked with blood, some of which looked like his own, if his many cuts in the suit were any indication. There was a shackle around one of his wrists, as if he'd broken out of something.

            When the alpha stood, he ripped off his mask there was pure relief on his face. He took a step toward Peter like he’d sweep the omega into his arms and Peter snarled something horrifying, stopping Wade in his tracks.

            The alpha took a second to search Peter’s face, “I'm sorry for pinning you like that, and pretending to turn you over to him. But we were surrounded. I heal, you don't. I swear it didn't think there was a better plan. I didn’t turn in the girls, they’re safe. Michelle's pissed but safe. She's waiting for you outside the perimeter.”

            Peter took a breath. His scent had gone blank.

            Wade shifted, his shackled wrist catching his attention. He held it up, "He was doing to kill me so Steve couldn't trace me and you back to himself."

            Peter took a shaky step toward Deadpool, and thankfully Wade crossed the distance because Peter collapsed the second Wade’s sweet, honey scent hit him. All the smoke gone from his scent.

            He was sweet like Peter had never smelled, honest and true and if Peter had ever doubted Wade loved him, he didn’t now. Wade was light as air in his nose, but sturdy as a stone around him.

            Love.

            As always, Peter’s biology was a double-edged sword. He was soft in Wade’s hold, a delicate flower, but he should have sharped himself to a knife’s point. Should have been something carefully crafted, but he wasn’t.

            Wade’s scent soothed him like ice water over a burn, and every inch of Peter was a sore wound, and everything about Wade was ice water.

            Soothing. But cold. Something that couldn’t last. Melting under Peter’s touch. Going. Going. Not something that could ever stay. Gone.

            Wade had done what he did for his family. To save someone he loved, and Peter hated it as much as he understood it. Wade had made a tough choice. 

            The sane choice. Maybe even the right choice. If it had been to save one of Peter’s girls, Peter would have kicked Wade to the wolves too.

            He understood. He did.

            He loved Wade. He loved him so much.

            Peter let a few tears loose against the alpha’s scent glands.

            He understood.

            Wade shuttered when Peter stabbed his pretty blade between his ribs. He gasped when Peter pulled it out with a twist.

            They fell to the stones together, Peter still cradled on Wade’s chest.

            When Peter looked up at Wade there was surprise on his alpha’s face. Peter had angled his blade right, had hit an artery in Wade’s chest. Blood sept over both Peter’s and Wade’s hand. Peter’s knife-free hand trapped under Wade’s as the alpha applied pressure.

            He lowered his brows as he gasped for a breath, confusion and hurt on his face.

            Peter sat up in his alpha’s lap. His voice was rough as nails as stubborn tears dripped down his nose, “I love you, Wade Wilson,” a sob crawled up his throat. “But I don’t forgive you for handing me over to a man who raped and torture me. I don’t care if you were saving me. You betrayed me.” Peter rose his knife and stabbed it through the man’s heart. Saw the man’s eyes shine as pretty and sparkly as the knife.

            Blood gushed from a deep gash on Peter’s palm from the decorative knife slipping in his grasp. It wasn’t meant for stabbing. It was a slashing weapon and Peter had gone through Wade’s chest plate with it.

            Wade’s heart struggled to beat around the knife in it, but he could see it’s failing in Wade’s ashening face, he leaned forward on his alpha’s chest, his nose noting that Wade’s scent was still light and sweet. He shook his head, sobbed.

            “I love you,” Wade whispered as he tangled his fingers sweetly on the back of Peter’s neck, “I never said I was a smart man. I’m just trying my best.”

            Peter leaned up a kissed under Wade’s jaw. “You did what you had to, and I’m doing what I have to. Where I have to go. You can’t follow.” He twisted the knife.

            Blood and blood.

            Blood on Wade’s chest. Blood on Peter’s hands.

            Wade’s blood, Peter’s blood, it seeped back into their wounds.

            Mixing, mixing.

            Entwined and entangled. Forever and ever.

            For Wade, this scar would last for a time, but it would get lost eventually, you wouldn’t even know he’d ever been there. Like Vanessa’s bite, it would be gone.

            He pulled the knife free from Wade’s chest and he barely made it a few more breaths before the life left Wade’s eyes, but Wade never got angry with him, his scent never sifted or changed. He watched Peter with hurt but understanding, brushing the hair from Peter’s dripping eyes, and the last thing he said before he was gone was “I’m sorry.” The fucking _bastard_.

            Peter dropped the blood covered golden knife on Wade’s chest and he cried. He cried all the tears he didn’t think he had anymore. He cried until he felt empty and lost and gone. Until all that was left was a shattered omega. Something that had already been broken but was now ruined.

            He rose, hiccuping, and went to pick up the omega who was watching them with round eyes.

            “You…” the omega looked over their shoulder to where Wade was laying. “He was your alpha.”

            “They usually are,” Peter choked and spun the militaristic trench knife in his uninjured hand. It was made for a larger hand, for an alpha, but Peter kept his grip tight.

            Luckily, Peter didn’t have to use it. Wade had dispatched most of the guards and if there was anyone left in the other houses in the household’s gates, no one came out to look at them.

            Peter held the stumbling omega and tried to be strong as he walked them out of the gates and into the open. They were barely a hundred feet from the household when Michelle materialized from the trees, at least that is how it felt.

            Michelle pushed Peter and the young omega into the tree line before crushing him in a hug.

             “Where’s Wade?” Michelle asked meeker than she usually would when he came up to her.

            Peter kept his face low, swallowing and pulling away, "Get him a horse."

            Michelle turned to the gasping omega and slung one of his arm over her shoulders to hobble them toward the horses, throwing back a concerned look.

            Peter breathed deep, “Wade is coming back," he prayed to himself, "He’s coming back. You know he always comes back.” He closed his eyes against the hurt and walked toward the horses.

            He set himself and Michelle on the horse with the young omega, leaving the other for Wade.

            They didn’t have a far ride to the inn where they had stashed some spare things. Peter and the young omega, named Eddie, washed then dressed in clean clothes. Then they set out toward home.

            Eddie insisted on being dropped off at his parent’s house, which was on the way so they obliged, then raced home.

 

 

 

 

 

            The whole trip home Michelle tried to get Peter to talk about what had happened inside Norman’s gates. ‘What had happened with Wade?’  ‘Why had Peter left him when he came back?’ ‘Did that asshole Norman bite you?’ ‘It isn’t healing, you have to let me look it.’ ‘What the hell scarred your hand like that?’

            The wound on his hand hadn’t even scabbed. In the span of a few hours it went from something that looked like it needed stitches to scar tissue. It was a clean looking thing. Straight but raised across the meat of his palm.

            Peter’s scent never changed the whole trip. It stayed blank. Not like he had died, there would be a distinct scent then, but like he had just stopped existing.

            Michelle kept checking him over. Kept looking for a physical reason, but even once she got the infection and swelling to go down on the bite over Peter’s scent gland, nothing changed.

            Peter suspected he might have injured it somehow by making his scent so severe when he had been roaming Norman’s halls, but if he had, there wasn’t much he could do about it, now.

            They set the horse free just south of home and took the back trails and rough terrain route to their cave.

             “If you ever see Wade, run.” Peter instructs one night when they were close to home, when the thorn forest outside the entrance was visible and they were closing in on it.

            Michelle stopped asking questions after that. He wouldn’t answer anyway.

            It was tense as they slipped in through the cave entrance.

            At the door, Gwen and MJ were there to great them, home early to meet them.

            And when everyone was washed and fed, they crawled into bed.

            Peter sat with them but couldn’t sleep. His mind spun to Wade, to Norman. To destiny and betrayal. To love and loss and the end of the world.

            He’d been so stupid.

 _Love_.

            How much of Wade’s charade had been real? Was any of it?

            Wade had been sweet and dangerous, and Peter had wanted him anyway.

            Stupidstupidstupid.

            Love was for other people. Love was for romance novels. It was for people who deserved it.

            Peter hadn’t worked hard enough for it.

            He’d never be able to either.

            He wasn’t what people wanted from an omega, he couldn’t be sweet enough, wasn’t soft enough. He always fought and he always ran.

            A runaway. A thief. A liar and stain on society. Blood and bones. Heartbreak and longing.

            True to form Peter was a failure. Had fallen in love with the very person who would hand him over to pain like it was his job. 

            Peter had been sentenced the moment he stepped onto Wade’s household. That was how Wade found him. He’d stepped right up to the lion’s den and instead of being eaten, the lion had grabbed him and handed him to the cackling hyena with Peter’s blood already between its teeth.

            Peter dropped his head to MJ’s damp hair. He just wanted someone. Was that too much to ask for? Just someone who he could fall against. Someone he could touch and be touched by. Someone who made him smile, someone who wanted him to be himself. Someone who saw that Peter was broken and let him be that way.

            Why? Why couldn’t he have it? Why couldn’t he have Wade? Why was everything he ever wanted the wrong thing?

            He held back a whimper and tried to pull himself free of the girls. They shifted and complained but he eventually stumbled out of bed. He grabbed the trench knife and carried it with him through the house and to the porch.

            He sat hard on the steps. It was cold, but he was alone when his lids gave up the first of their tears.

            Stupid.

            Love.

            Stupid.

            Why?

            His mind spun in circles.

            Blue eyes and beautiful smiles. A little girl with dark, short hair. Wade’s hands in his hair. The fit of Wade’s knife in his hand. The taste of Wade on his tongue. His alpha’s hands on his thighs. The grip of them. The pressure. The strength.

            Peter had wanted to be supported, to be wanted. To feel like he was more than the sum of his parts, more than just something for right then, something someone could chase forever. Would smile and laugh and love with Peter like he mattered.

            He was so, so tired of feeling like he didn’t matter. Of being expendable.

            He was tired of using the world and hoping it wouldn’t suck him dry anyway.

            Hollow. Peter felt like a hollow man. It’s all he could hope to be. He was not a good man. Not full of all the things people needed to survive. He was hollow, and he was all the more fragile for it.

            Dropping his eyes down to the trench knife in his hand, Peter let himself trace the edge of the blade. It was clean, smooth.

            He opened his other palm, eyed the silver scar. He had to concentrate to close than hand now. The scar pulling slightly, but the more he flexed it the easier it got to open and close.

            He sighed.

            Wade was here. Wade was right here in the palm of his hand. He pulled at Peter’s fingers when he made a fist. He stung on the edges when Peter touched it.

            Not a bond bite. No, not Peter and Wade. Of course, the thing that tied them together would be stab wound. Bloodbound.

            It was the only confirmation Peter would ever have that Wade had loved him too. The scar was proof that Wade had wanted Peter forever, even if he handed Peter over. He wasn't sure if that was enough.

            He pressed the scar against his lips, and he cried again. The pain felt like it would last forever.

            Maybe that was the promise the scar had forged for them. It seemed like a simple trade. Love for pain.

            The world _must_ give one, that doesn’t mean it is always the one you intend.

            They would always hurt. Always and forever. Pain for as long as they choose to live. Forever and ever. It would link them like a chain. It would rest against their chests like a newborn child and grow as they did.

            Grow teeth and claws.

            Scream and cry.

            Beg and pled.

            Peter lifted his eyes and wiped his nose as Miles appeared at the foot of the stairs. “Shit,” Peter croaked around the tears in his throat.

            “You smell different,” the boy scrunched his nose. “Sweeter.”

            Peter blinked. Then sniffed lightly, and nearly started crying again when he smelled Wade strung through his own scent. It was a tooth-rotting mix of scents, burnt honey and sweet flowers.

            “Um,” Miles scratched his chin nervously, “Did you, um, - I mean you guys are home so much earlier than you usually are. Did you bring home an alpha or something? You smell like them? That’s what the smell means right? You blood bound with them.”

            “Yeah, Miles, I bound, but he’s… we’re… I…” Peter couldn’t get his mouth to say the words. It hurt too much. He just lowered his eyes and stared down at Wade’s knife.

            Miles didn’t say anything else, just sat down next to Peter and set his head against his shoulder. And Peter leaned back.

            A soft shuffling behind him, had Peter turning over his shoulder to find Michelle standing in the doorway.

            Her eyes were dark, glinting softly with a well of tears. 

            Miles turned to spot her too and she nods her head into the house, “Go inside,” she asks softly and Miles pulls away from Peter to obey. 

            As he passes, Michelle pushes away from the entrance so the door closes. She doesn’t join him on the steps but takes one of the rickety chairs by the railing around the porch. 

            Her eyes land on Peter’s seriously, and Peter looks away before his whole world crumbles. He doesn’t know how long she had been behind him, how much of his pain she’d seen. Maybe she could still smell it, smell his fear and his longing and his world crashing down all around him.

            “Talk,” she says at last and his shoulder rise to his ears.

            “What is there to say?” Peter asks almost hostile.

            “He hurt you,” she deduces easily, her voice flat, maybe she knew all along.

            Anger rises in his chest, he wants to spit it out, “I don’t want to hear ‘I told you-’ ”

            “This isn’t about that,” she interrupts. 

            “Michelle,” Peter growls.

            “Something happened on the other side of that wall,” she says drawls and Peter wants to run away rather than have this conversation, but his legs just won’t listen. “Norman’s dead, I could smell that much on you. I don’t think you could have left if he wasn’t, not this time. But Wade…” Peter whimpered pathetically, “I don’t know what he did to hurt you Peter, but I think you hurt yourself more.”

            “Hurt  _ myself _ ?” Peter choked, “Michelle how could you fucking say that-”

            “Because I know what self-sabotage looks like Peter! You don’t think I didn’t see it coming a mile away? You cared about him! He LOVED you! The whole way to Norman’s all I could smell was how happy you two were. The two of you scented like fucking twins and like you were heat away from letting him bloodbind you, even when every word out of your mouth was the opposite. You were always going to find fault with something he did so you didn’t have to take him home.  _ Always _ . You wanted to run. Couldn’t stand the thought-”

            “He handed me over to Norman!” Peter yelled, tears tracking down his cheeks, Michelle going pale, her rant dying on her tongue. “We were surrounded- it was so  _ stupid _ \- I wasn’t being observant enough. I dropped right into the middle of a fucking fleet of gaurds, and we were fucking trapped. Wade went and acted like it was his plan to bring me in and handed me off to the one person-” Darkness swarmed in the corners of his eyes, and he leaned forward into his knees, breathing hard through the flood of panic. 

            Michelle moved from her chair to the stairs beside him and he curled against her chest when she wrapped her arms around his shoulders.

            He sobbed gently against her collarbone as she swept his hair back, a soft, comforting noise curling in her throat and into Peter’s ear.

            “God, you were right,” he breathed wetly, “Me and him were only ever going to hurt each other. I fucking stabbed him in the chest with that same decorative knife he left for me to escape Norman with.” 

            She nosed against his hairline, whispering, “Jesus Christ.”

            They sat in silence after that, long minutes of Peter sniffling and Michelle stroking his hair, followed by the two of them breaking apart to lean against the banisters on either side of the stairs.

            Peter fiddled with the scar maring his palm, his fingers drawing over the shape, his heart melancholy. 

            “Just tell me one thing,” Michelle asks softly after a while, “Do you think he made the wrong choice handing you over when you two were surrounded, if in the end, Norman still- if you still- if the bastard is fucking dead?”

             “You think I should forgive him?” 

            She turns her eyes down to her hands, “I don’t think I could be able to. I don’t know if you  _ should _ . I-I... I still think the hurt always escalates. But you… You  _ love _ things still Peter, I’ve seen it. I’ve seen you reach passed all your fears and reach for love where I can’t. I don’t know. I don’t know if you should forgive him. I mean- There’s no guarantee  _ he’ll  _ forgive  _ you _ . I just don’t want you to give up on love, even if you give up on loving him.”

 

 

 

 

            The ride was quiet. Much more subdued at least than anything Bucky and Steve had become used to with a full carriage headed towards Stark’s spring festival.

            Peter had done his best to not be a bother. Dressed modestly with a long sleeve, dusty rose lace shirt and fitted black trousers. And though he was barefoot, he was still more dressed than Bucky could complain about, even if he kept throwing concerned glances his way.

            He’d gotten those same looks all winter, and Peter knew why even if he couldn’t remedy it on his own. Gwen kept calling him a wilted flower and MJ was overly affectionate like he had been gone for an extended period.

            But he hadn’t been able to negate that either. Most days that empty feeling clung so tight he could hardly breath. He felt wilted. He felt like he was disappearing.

            All winter he stayed at home in their cave. Kept up the compost, cared for the garden, watched the animals and took care of each of the girls when their heat hit, and practically stopped existing when his hit. They couldn’t get him out of the sweaty pit of the bed, or get him to eat or drink anything, or even speak, until it was over and then he just didn’t know how to answer their questions, to quell their concerns.

            He felt different. Something less substantial than hollow.

            He was tired.

            The only reason he had gone with the girls to the festival at all was because they would have stayed with him if he refused to go, and they loved the festival.

            He didn’t realize he was shivering until Michelle slipped off her black, silk covering and draped it over his shoulders, rubbing soothingly at his back. He slipped her a smile and turned back out the window, watched the city grow close and too tall. Watched it swallow them, carriage and all, like a great big beast.

            The light of the festival used to excite him, a happy glow of promise he wasn’t sure he wanted anymore. It was grating in a way it had never been before.

            Miles, however, was oohing and awing at the showiness of it. It was his first time in Stark’s household, and the first time he was going in public with Gwen since their relationship changed to something more than student and teacher. Gwen was smiling as she held her beta’s hand and rubbing her cheek against his shoulder. Peter had to force himself to look away, least his heart shatter with jealousy.

            Bucky checked them all over before they left the carriage, made sure they were all wearing their collars and then they moved as a group with Steve into the party and spilt up as they normally would. Steve and Bucky going one direction, Gwen and Miles another, and MJ and Michelle sticking to Peter’s side.

            “You guys should go find something fun to do,” he sighed as they walked out into the vast sitting area in the courtyard, “I’ll be fine, I swear.”

            MJ looked off to the bar with somewhat wistful eyes before Peter shooed her toward it. But Michelle looked content to walk with him, so they did.

            They eventually ran into Natasha whose lovely red hair was decorated with little white flowers and pretty little trinkets that would make MJ salivate. She had a brutish looking beta male with her that she introduced as Clint, and the two of them smelled so much like each other that their scent bond must have been nearly as old as they were. Childhood friends if not siblings.

            “You smell like Wade Wilson,” Clint said bluntly, and Natasha swatted his arm.

            “Classy.”

            “Ow! We can’t all be a covert as you, Tasha,” he pouted rubbing at his offended arm in way that suggested her hit had been more than it appeared in strength.

            Natasha just tugged his arm and started away, “Sorry about him, he was raised in the circus he doesn’t know any better.”

            As they disappeared into the crowd, Michelle turned to him, “What kind circus do you think he was in?”

            Peter could help but snort as they continued on their aimless wondering.

            Michelle shrugged it off and her eyes started straying up to the beautiful night sky. There were rain clouds in the far distance, but the stars seemed to glow all the brighter in anticipation of being hidden. There weren’t as many of them as there would be out of the city, but Michelle didn’t really seem to care.

            Her eyes were still lingering upward when Peter caught sight of a dark mop of black hair, and the beautiful woman trying to herd her daughter toward the hotel. Vanessa and Ellie.

            Peter’s heart stopped and he froze in place.

            Michelle stroked his hair and he turned toward her hand for comfort, soft tears already leaking from his eyes, “Go ahead and find Steve, I’ll wait here and distract them if they see you,” she said caringly.

            He nodded and obeyed.

            He felt so weak. Useless. The kind of broken omega that Loki would have been disappointed to see, would have frowned so fiercely, hell’d seem a prettier sight.

            He spun on his heel and had disappeared around a corner before anyone saw him. Halfway down a set of stairs, someone at the bottom froze in his path.

            His eyes landed on Wade.

            The tiny tendril of scent that has been following him like a ghost was washed toward him in the breeze and Peter wavered on his feet.

            Scent bound.

            He was weak against the power of that beautiful smell. He was soft and angry and tired and me wanted Wade so bad his body felt like it didn’t belong to him anymore.

            That’s what’s been hurting him for months now. He _wanted_ Wade. Wantedwantedwanted. And he didn’t know how to navigate the ache of that and the call of injustice of it all.

            His alpha was dressed in a red silk shirt, and black trousers decorated with ornate red stitching, shiny black shoes, and blue-blue eyes that glittered more beautiful than any sky dared try. He was gorgeous and breath taking and before Peter could stop himself, he was down the stairs and in Wade’s personal space.

            Standing over the alpha just one step higher. His scent painfully roiling with fury.

            Wade’s scent… it was soft as an apology. “ _Babyboy_.” He croons, voice a gentle card through Peter’s soul.

            He balled his fists in Wade’s beautiful shirt, knocking their foreheads together. “I hate how much I missed you,” Peter confesses, and he nearly drifts from the earth when the weight of it lifts off his shoulders.

            He hadn’t spoken it to anyone else.

            Not a soul but the one he’d felt shatter and tried to desperately to fix himself.

            He'd missed Wade. 

            “ _I’m so sorry_ ,” Wade whispers, and Peter wants to bathe in that fucking sound. “I don’t know how to… I can’t… I’ve never loved someone so much as fucked up so completely before… _I break everything I_ -”

            "You could warned me!" Peter exploded, shaking Wade with his fists of shirt, "You could have fucking warned me before you pinned me. Now all I do is question everything you've ever said me. Question how you felt-"

            Wade's scent tries it's best to be soothing, "I'm sorry. I swear i never wanted you to feel that way. I just wanted to make sure you didn't fucking die right then and there. I'm not saying it was the best plan but it was all i had."

            "You fucking idiot," Peter pulls Wade against him and grinds all of his anger into a punishing kiss that made Wade whimper like a tiny little thing, like Peter was crushing the life from him.

            He was so, so angry.

            Furious.

            Terrified.

            Burning alive in the flaming waves of it.

            But between one heartbeat and the next, he found himself surrounded in his alpha, a purr crawling up his throat as feather light butterfly kisses rained across his cheeks, over his jaw and down his neck. His hands softened from vises and Wade pulled him tighter to his chest.

            He wanted to forgive Wade. "I hate you so much for hurting me," Peter hissed from under Wade's chin. 

            "You killed me," Wade whispers, and tears of guilt surge to Peter's eyes.

            "I'm so-  _God,_  we're fucked, aren't we?" Peter whimpers.

            Wade nuzzles the side of his head. "Probably."

           Peter couldn’t fight the stream of tears that roll down his cheeks, “Alpha,” he pleaded, terrified of the softness begging to be felt. “Please don’t hurt me again.”

            His alpha wrapped hands around his thighs to pull him up into his arms and Peter wrapped himself over Wade’s shoulder and hooked his ankles behind Wade’s waist, kissing and breathing into Wade’s mouth desperately.

            “Omegaomega _omega_ ,” Wade panted between kisses traveling down his neck. "I'll do everything in my power to keep you safe, I promise."

            Peter grabbed the alpha's chin, Wade sobering slightly as they made eye contact, "I'm sorry for everything, I promise to keep you safe too."

            With every ounce of love in his body, Peter caved into his aching heart and kissed him so sweetly.

            He felt it in every inch of his skin, in as deep in his chest as he dared feel.

            Wade shifted his hand to cradle Peter's jaw and it caught on Steve’s leather collar and the omega whimpered and tugged at the material at the same moment Wade growled.

            “Off,” Peter demanded urgently, “Take it off, Alpha. I don’t want it. Just you. Just my Alpha. Minemine _mine_.”

            Wade nearly ripped it off, breaking the catch as he tried to undo it and  Peter didn’t bother to track where it ended up.

            He felt free, once and for all. Like he didn't have to run away for once. like he could run toward something.

            He buried his head under Wade’s chin and pushed away the shirt to sink his teeth into the meat of Wade’s shoulder, right over his scent glands.

            Then it was just Wade.

            His scent and blood and his huge hands on Peter’s body.

            So, drunk on Wade’ scent he couldn’t even feel his heat sneaking up months too early, but hot as coals over his whole body.

            Peter blacked out.

 

 

 

 

 

            Wade woke up draped with a lanky little thing, half naked and groggy from too much scent.

            Peter was passed out on his bare chest, his arms tucked under Wade’s shoulder blades, his scent almost overpoweringly happy and content. His brown curls were beautiful against his pale skin, a stark contrast to Wade’s horrifying scars.

            His eyes caught on the smear of blood on Peter’s shoulder and traced it back to the severe looking bite mark over the little thing’s scent gland. It was huge and thickly scared in the shape of Wade’s teeth, the blood smeared with saliva.

            He took a moment to feel the guilt of hurting Peter yet again, even if it had been Peter’s bite that had lead him into reciprocate the overwhelming surge of endorphins of being bitten by not only someone he loved, but that he’d missed so much that he’d scared off Shikalah, who’d barely tolerated him on a good day.

            Peter shifted in his sleep, a little purr pressing itself to Wade’s chest, crawling into his heart.

            He loved his little omega so much. Loved how dangerous he was, how sharp and smart and deadly he was. He loved his intense brown eyes and the lashing his tongue liked to whip out. He was snarky, angry.

            The kind of thing that broke alphas.

            That smashed them to bits, cut them to ribbons, took and took and took until he bled you dry.

            He was the kind of thing that Wade could go toe to toe with and lose. The kind of misfit that Wade’s family seemed to gather.

            Wade loved him more than air.

            He nosed into Peter’s hair, finally noticing the sweetness of his little thing’s scent was more than it seemed. Peter was edging into heat.

            “Babyboy,” Wade whispered into his ear, and Peter shivered then growled a tender noise.

            “Alpha,” he grumbled, “The sun’s not even up.” He yawned almost pathetically, “ _Have_ _mercy_.”

            They were snuggled up on Wade’s hotel bed, and he could smell Vanessa and Ellie in the next room, but if Peter was going into heat, a number of things needed to happen. They’d both been too out of it last night to make any coherent decisions so they had to address them now.

            “Omega, your family must be worried sick,” Wade whispered urgently and that had the little thing bolting up on his chest, his intense eyes were severe with worry despite he was hardly even awake.

            “Shh,” Wade cooed, smoothing a hand up Peter’s chest and to his jaw, distracted for a moment by the goose flesh breaking out in the wake of his palm and the darkening of Peter’s scent with interest. “I-“ he choked on his own words, hating having to leave when Peter looked hot enough to eat for dinner, “I should go make sure your pack knows you’re here. Should I bring them to the room? Or would you feel better just with them during your heat?”

            Peter blinked confusion before a sort of realization passed his face, “Oh.” He looked down at Wade and his eyes went dark again, “ _Oh_ ,” he growled with a predatory smirk and it went straight to Wade’s dick. He dropped forward and nearly swallowed Wade in a kiss.

            Wade could feel his rut surging forward for his omega, a result of their body being so in tuned with each other that a real rut was coming forward to meet his bloodbound mate’s heat, which had to have been early by months, but was forced forward by emotional and physical intimacy after being separated so soon after their initial binding, not to mention the reaffirming of the bind by remarking each other with bites.

            “Babyboy,” he breathed against Peter’s mouth, “Your pack.”

            The omega whimpered, his eyes closed as he rubbed his face against Wade’s cheek and jaw and mouth, “Don’t leave. Stay with me, my Alpha,

            “Babyboy,” Wade tried, but Peter whimpered again, and he had to gather the omega against his chest to chase away the fear and hurt in his omega’s scent. not calling Vanessa until he'd covered Peter with a blanket, so he could tell you to go get the omega's family.

 

 

 

 

            Peter fell asleep against his alpha again, and only woke up when Michelle’s soft fingers brushed his hair behind his ear. He stirred enough from sleep to peek at her though his heat hazed eyes. His heat was an hour or two away from a first wave.

            He was thankful Wade was there to lay on as sweat gathered on his back, and his skin ached to be touched, even if Michelle looked ready to fillet him alive, “Do you know how worried we were?” she hissed.

            But Peter couldn’t find it in himself to be upset. He could smell MJ and Gwen in the next room with Wade’s pack and he just wanted to be surrounded in their scents until his heat hit. He grabbed Michelle’s wrist and surprised all three of them by dragging her into the bed with him and Wade.

            “Woah!” Wade cried, as Michelle yelled, “What the fuck!?” but Peter was perfuming into the air his happiness at her in the bed and started scent marking her and Wade with enthusiasm and Michelle deflated. Her eyes shuttering closed as he nosed and touched under her chin.

            The noise or the perfuming must have drawn in the others because soon the bed was filled with his pack and Wade and Peter just flopped in the middle of them and died for a little while.

            By the time his heat hit, all of them were nearly drunk on scent. Peter and Wade perfuming like any newly mated couple did.

            It hadn’t been like this with Norman, Peter had never felt so safe in his life. Never felt like something one could want to keep, but Wade’s scent smelling like a home he could get used to, like a place he already belonged.

            After Peter, the first one awake was Gwen, who could barely blink as she groggily gathered up Michelle, and MJ to meet Wade’s betas and Miles in the next room, firmly closing the door as Wade start squirming as Wade responds to Peter’s scents.

            A feed back loop of yes and more and now.

            Peter’s mind stuck on one word as he crawls up Wade’s scarred chest. Mine and mine and mine.

            Their first strung out kiss sears Peter to the core, breaks him like a porcelain doll.

            Their scents are so loving and perfect, it might just put him back together again. Like a wish he couldn’t dare to make, like the stars he’d collected all that time ago had been waiting for this moment.

            Just hands and mouths and bodies and stars.

            The ones that sparkle in your tears, the ones that burst behind your lids, the kind that sneak down from the sky to glow under your ribs. The kind that make up souls. And reach across the expanse to connect them together.

 

 

 

 

            “Wade, you idiot!” Domino yelled throwing her hammer at him and he barely had time to dodge it. Peter didn’t know what she was upset about but he had to agree, the alpha tracking in mud from outside.

            MJ squawked, hurting Peter’s sensitive ears, “Muddy shoes, outside!” and swatted at the alpha’s bare shoulder.

            “Well, I can’t do anything right!” Wade griped walking back out to the porch, and Peter followed him out.

            Wade and Domino have been working on the two new cabins, one for Domino and the other for Weasel. Unlike Peter’s pack, the beta’s weren’t as interested in sharing beds, willing to endure cold nights for privacy. Peter thought it was unconventional, but Wade always said his family had issues, which was true.

            Most of the groundwork had been lain out for the new homes in the cave and now they were just waiting for Weasel and Michelle to get most of the pluming and electricity working before they could get interior walls up.

            “What he do now?” Peter asked and once the alpha was out of his shoes, Peter manhandled the brute to a chair on the porch, where he could rub over Wade’s shoulders.

            “Nothing,” Wade pouted, his scent dejected, “I’m an innocent this time.”

            Domino scowled, “Yeah, sure you are.” She huffed, but the aggression left her features and scent. “I’m gonna go find somewhere to sulk.” Then she was down the stairs and heading off toward the garden where Ellie was working with the plants, her mother supervising.

            Peter turned down to Wade and nosed at the mating mark still visible over his scent glands. His alpha purred and he reciprocated.

            A few months had passed since the spring festival and Peter hadn’t found himself smothered by the doubling of his packs’ size. Somehow, they’d made it work.

            Gwen had moved in with Miles into their own home in his father’s household, and that had helped some. She still visited often, less now that she was pregnant. But Michelle still traveled down with Weasel to check on her often.

            And that was an interesting dynamic. Michelle and Weasel got along shockingly well, Weasel’s sarcasm and snark had actually made Michelle laugh a few times. They spend so much time together tinkering with technology, that they were scent bound in less than a week.

            MJ had fallen in love with Ellie at first sight, and the little girl was honestly a sponge with learning, latching herself to Gwen every time she travels to the cave ready to be mentored in whatever subject Gwen decides on that day, more often than not, leaving the girl with a long list of books at the girl eat, sleeps and dreams with.

            The sounds of footbeats draws Peter attention, Ellie smiling like a beacon as she jumps up the stairs and into her father’s lap, “Daddy, my pumpkins are growing!”

            Wade chuckles, “But we already have one of those!” and starts raining kisses on her head and hair as she giggles.

            “No, _real_ pumpkins!”

            “Is there a fake kind?” Peter teased, and she wrinkled her nose at him with a grin.

            “Like Cinderella’s carriage but backwards?” She asked and made Peter and Wade burst out laughing.

            Vanessa had that charmed look on her face again as she trailed up the stairs, her eyes on her mates and child.

            Peter and her surprisingly have found a good relationship. She’s not the type of alpha that demands boundaries, she’s more than happy to share Wade with Peter, even was happy to merge their lives in Peter’s home rather than her own. She smart and adaptable. Kind.

            She leans down to pick up Ellie, “Come on little one, we need to wash up for dinner then you can harass your dad and Peter all you want, I promise.” She kisses Wade chastely and makes sure to gently scent mark Peter as she passes, in a way that is always flirting, though they’d never had sex or even kissed, but he could see the appeal eventually. He felt himself blush even as she disappeared inside.

            Wade pulled Peter into his lap and Peter went willingly. Resting his head on his alpha’s shoulder and enjoying the bulk of it.           

            An easy sort of moment fell over them. A moment of calm in the whirlwind that was their pack.

            Peter hurt to think that a year ago he’d not had this. He didn’t have Wade or Ellie or a growing pack. He didn’t have contentment or security. He didn’t feel wanted or needed or alive. But now, every time he turned around, he found a new reason to smile, to laugh, to settle. For the first time in so, so long, he knew that wherever he went, however far from home he strayed, he wasn’t alone. Wade was always on his tail, and his pack was already waiting for his return.

            He let out a long breath, and Wade’s hand curled against his stomach, edging just under the hem to swirl his fingers against his skin.

            Peter turned over his shoulder with a playful flash of teeth, nipping under Wade’s jaw.

            “So, mean to me,” Wade teased, “All I do is pet, and you bite me?”

            Peter turned his alpha’s lap to nibble under his ear, making the alpha’s breath catch, “I’m just toughing you up. Don’t want you going soft.” 

            “Well, one of us has to be,” he pressed a sweet kissed to Peter’s mouth, “My omega is all nails and teeth.”

            Peter hummed into his mouth with a smile. “Don’t forget the knives.”

            Wade trailed his hand up under Peter’s shirt, like the menace he was, until his fingers found the knife harness on his chest. A militaristic, black handled blade curved in its sheath and guarding Peter’s heart. “Never forget the knives,” Wade agreed.

**Author's Note:**

> kudos? comments?
> 
>  
> 
> As a P.S. I just wanted to thank everyone who left kudos and bookmarks or read the fic so far. The action on this fic is crazy compared to my other works, so thank you again. You guys are amazing.


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